


Give Him The Cookie

by Ryxl



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, I googled the weirdest stuff for this, Lots of cuddles, M/M, No Sexual Content, Science gone awry, creative cooking for smol mouths and smol hands, gratuitous cookies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-11 17:00:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17450867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryxl/pseuds/Ryxl
Summary: A mishap with Winston's equipment has reduced Commander Reyes to the size of Baby Groot, and he doesn't understand how smol and adorable he is. Jesse McCree is tasked with keeping him out of trouble until a solution can be found, while Jack Morrison is torn between worrying...and doting on his smol husband.Inspired byscaryspookycoin'sabsolutely adorablearton tumblr. Features art byGizaandtatch. Part of the Blackwatch Big Bang that almost didn't exist.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Much love to Giza and tatch for their art! This event nearly didn't happen, and it took about half a year longer than expected, but they stuck with it and we made it and finally, I can share all this cuteness with everyone. You can find ALL the art in chapter 3, with the links in the notes at the end. Giza's art has been added!

_Zurich, 2064_

_Gabriel_

 

 “It’s designed to scan the whole body,” Winston said, “and…uh…Commander Reyes, may I use you to demonstrate?”

Gabriel crossed his arms and grinned over at his husband the Strike-Commander and the cowboy he’d made his second-in-command. “Sure.”

“Ah. Thank you. You see, once the body is scanned…” The equipment made a series of odd, beeping sounds, causing the gorilla to look puzzled. “Uh…that’s not…hold on…oh dear,” he finished in an alarming way.

He had enough time to think _oh, cra-_ before the world went…weird. Sounds distorted into incomprehensibility, sight went fractal, and his brain gave up trying to make sense of anything.

When the world made sense again, Gabriel Reyes found himself buck naked in the ‘public’ room of the suite he shared with his husband. The round wooden table they typically ate at held a shoebox that had been turned into a bed for Jack’s commemorative Mini-Jack figure and a serving platter with what appeared to be a foot-tall doll house built out of chocolate chip cookie bars cut into bricks, complete with a door and two windows and a chocolate-chip-shingle roof.

What the _hell_ happened?

He looked around, only mildly relieved to see his husband sitting at the table. The man looked like he’d gone a week without sleeping.

“Jack?” Gabriel held one hand out, almost afraid to touch at the realization that his sunshine was holding a ring and that his ring finger seemed awfully naked. “Are you okay?”

“I was worried,” he answered quietly, taking his husband’s hand and gripping it tightly. Then he slid the ring back onto that dreadfully naked finger.

Before Gabriel could ask what was going on, Jack stood and hugged him. Fiercely, desperately, trembling, distressing enough that he just hugged back for a long minute. Then, when Jack seemed to be falling asleep on his feet, he swung his exhausted husband into a bridal carry and put him to bed. The first order of business was to check Jack’s vitals, and then once he was sure his husband was okay, he put on some _clothes_ and called up Jesse McCree.

“Oh good, it worked,” the cowboy said cheerfully once he picked up and the video cut on.

 _“What_ worked?” Gabriel demanded, adrenaline surging through his body.

Jesse’s smile drained away. “Wait…you mean you _don’t remember?”_

“Don’t remember what?” He knew it was the dumbest, most cliché thing to ask, but the words just fell out of his mouth while his heart dropped into his stomach. “Jesse…”

“Now, just keep calm, _jefe.”_ McCree held one hand up in a ‘settle down’ motion. “Let me mosey on over with something to drink and I’ll tell you the whole story. I assume the Strike-Commander’s sleeping?”

Gabriel glanced at the open door to the bedroom. “Yeah.”

“Good. He needs it. Alright, I’ll be over in a jiffy. Just hang tight, boss.”

The connection closed, and Gabriel sighed. “I don’t see that I have much choice,” he grumbled to the empty room.

Less than three minutes later, the door to the suite opened and McCree slipped inside brandishing a six-pack of bottled beer and a plastic bag holding what looked to be one of Jack’s home-made chocolate chip cookies, but the size of a dinner plate. With a nod, he indicated the cluster of comfortable lounging chairs over in the corner, and once they were settled with a beer and a chunk of cookie each, he cleared his throat.

“So, uh, it’s been one hell of a week and a half,” McCree began, clearly skirting around the promised _whole story_. “I know you’re not gonna believe half of this without proof, so I brought some video…”

“Jesse…” The word was nearly a growl.

“Okay, okay!” The cowboy took a pull at his bottle and swallowed. “So we were standing there, waiting to see what would happen after Winston scanned you, when that gizmo of his started beeping. Then, suddenly…you were gone.”

* * *

 

_Jesse_

 

“Oh dear,” Winston said in a way that sounded like something was about to hit the fan.

Commander Reyes’s eyes widened the way Jesse had seen so many times right before his CO started yelling, but before he could open his mouth, he vanished and his armor collapsed into an empty pile. Jesse stared in numb horror at the place where his boss used to be, dimly aware that the Strike-Commander had charged Winston and was yelling something about making him regret leaving the moon if he didn’t bring his husband back _this instant._

Winston babbled that he didn’t know what had gone wrong, but Jesse wasn’t paying attention. He knelt by the pile of clothing and armor with thoughts of gathering it up, or checking for a clue as to what had happened to his boss, while behind him Morrison bellowed _Where is Gabriel?_

Something in the pile moved. A head no bigger than his fist, wearing a tiny frown of concentration, emerged from underneath a fold of cloth.

Jesse’s breath caught in his throat. “Boss?” he breathed.

The head – round and smooth, like a baby’s but more so – turned to him. Tiny, chubby hands pushed at the folds of cloth in irritation, and slowly, Jesse reached out to pull it away from the little figure.

The little figure who was _naked,_ although Jesse couldn’t help but see the soft, rounded body as being like a baby doll.

“I don’t _want_ answers!” yelled the Strike-Commander, sounding on the verge of tears. “I want Gabe!”

“I am Gabe,” the little figure said in a piping little voice. Then, imperiously, he held his hands out as though commanding Jesse to pick him up.

“O-okay, just hold on a sec.” He fumbled in various pockets until he found a red bandana, which he then tied awkwardly into a sort of toga or sarong or something around that little body because doll-like or not, that was still his boss – apparently – and he didn’t think the Strike-Commander would appreciate anyone ogling his husband’s bits. “Alright, gonna pick you up now. Lemme know if it’s uncomfortable.”

Gingerly, he wrapped one hand around Gabriel’s torso and lifted. Although the little figure didn’t seem uncomfortable, he brought his other hand around to give those little feet something to rest on. Hey, that’s what cats like, and he was the size of a kitten so…it made sense, right?

Winston, perhaps unsurprisingly considering how thoroughly he was trying to avoid the Strike-Commander’s eyes, was the first to notice the little figure as Jesse walked over.  “What is _that?”_ he blurted, one thick finger pointing at the small figure.

“I am Gabe!”

“Found him in the Commander’s clothes an’ armor,” Jesse said almost apologetically as his boss’s husband turned to fix him with an incredulous glare.

The small figure held out his tiny, chubby hands. “Jack!”

‘Jack’ looked like he needed to sit down before he fell.

“What’s he doing?” Winston asked as the figure inspected his hands.

“I don’t have the foggiest idea,” Jesse answered.

The figure – it was getting harder to _not_ think of it as being Gabriel – turned to Jesse and made unhappy sounds while waving his left arm around.

“What do you need, boss?”

More intensely unhappy sounds, more waving, and then the figure reached over to pinch the skin on the back of-

-on the back of his _ring_ finger.

“Oh! Uh…hold on a sec. Here,” he said, handing the figure to the stunned Strike-Commander before diving for the pile of clothed and armor and rooting around. It took a few seconds before he located Gabriel’s wedding ring and leaped to his feet to offer it to his tiny boss. “There y’go, _jefe_.”

Gabriel(?) gave a tiny grunt of satisfaction as he grabbed the ring and shoved it onto his left arm like an oversized bracelet, then pushed it up onto his bicep and flexed with a pleased expression on his little…on his tiny…darn it, those words didn’t capture how uncomfortably _cute_ his state was. On his _smol_ face, that was better.

His boss was smol.

Jesse sighed. This was going to be _interesting_.

* * *

 

_Jack_

 

Although Angela Ziegler had joined Overwatch just recently, she was not an unfamiliar face and Jack Morrison needed no convincing to bring his smol husband to her while Winston checked over the data from his device. Once he, McCree, and Dr. Ziegler had all crowded into an examination room, however, the need for convincing spiked. Jack knew that the young doctor needed to hold Gabriel in order to effectively examine him – or at least, needed Jack to _not_ be holding him – but convincing himself to let go of his husband’s little body was easier said than done. To make matters worse, on top of his own protective reluctance, Gabriel didn’t _want_ to leave the dubious safety of Jack’s hands.

Every time Ziegler approached him, either with her gloved fingers or with a medical instrument, he lashed out with his tiny hands and growled “No!” in what was, quite frankly, an _adorable_ little voice. Jack was torn between trying to reason with his smol husband, and agreeing with him. Both Gabriel and Dr. Ziegler grew more frustrated with their stalemate, and Jack knew something had to give.

No one was prepared for Gabriel’s lower lip to tremble as his eyes filled with tears. With one final, wailed “Noooooo!” he tucked himself into a ball and did his best to hide in Jack’s hands.

Ziegler directed a pleading look at Jack, but he curled his hands around Gabriel and brought him to his chest. The tiny, muffled whimpers his little husband was making were remarkably loud in the examination room.

“Hey, Captain Amari?” McCree said suddenly, one hand raised to his earpiece. “We need your help. How do you calm down a fussy…small?” The cowboy winced at something Jack couldn’t hear. “A…small. Dr. Ziegler’s trying to check him out, and…I don’t know, far as I’m concerned you’re the expert. Yeah. Okay, I’ll be in the hall to wave you in. Thanks.” McCree turned to them with a lopsided grin. “Captain Amari’s on her way. Figured she was our best bet for expertise _and_ discretion.”

“Good call,” Jack said tightly.

McCree nodded. “I’ll just be out in the hall so she knows what room we’re in.”

By the time Ana followed McCree into the room, Gabriel had calmed down – but he still sulkily refused to let Ziegler examine him. Ana recoiled when she saw the state Gabriel was in, but she visibly shook it off and held out…a lollipop?

“Doctor’s visits traditionally involve lollipops,” she said in calm explanation as she held it out to Gabriel. “Do you want it?”

Gabriel made a questioning sort of noise.

“You have to let Dr. Ziegler examine you,” Ana said firmly.

He debated for a few seconds before holding both hands out. “Give!”

Ana handed it over. Gabriel struggled with the wrapper before looking up at Jack with an unfairly effective pleading expression.

“I need to put you down to unwrap it,” Jack said.

Gabriel nodded.

Jack set his little husband on the table and stripped the wrapper – Dum-Dum, butterscotch – from the lollipop that was effectively the size of a two-handed mace in Gabriel’s tiny hands. The sound of delight he made as he licked it made Jack feel warm and just a little melty.

Gingerly, now that her patient was pleasantly distracted, Dr. Ziegler brought her equipment closer and examined Gabriel thoroughly. He didn’t even seem to notice, all his attention on the lollipop, even when she laid him on his back or gently pulled one arm away from his body to run a sensor over it. Once she was done, she stepped back to check the data and Gabriel smiled up at Jack, lollipop extended in an invitation to lick.

Cheeks slightly flushed, Jack leaned over and carefully licked the candy. Gabriel squealed in glee and flung himself at his husband’s face, the arm not holding the lollipop’s stick doing a good job of hugging Jack’s cheek, and tiny lips pressed themselves to the corner of his mouth.

“That was _adorable,_ ” Ana remarked to McCree.

He snorted in amusement. “Didn’t think he had it in him, what with him bustin’ our balls in Blackwatch all the time.”

Ziegler made a sound of annoyance. “I will need to confer with Winston,” she started, “but in the meantime I can tell you that he _is_ Gabriel Reyes and he seems to be healthy. Feed him as much as he wants to eat, make sure he has plenty of water, and try to improvise some sanitary facilities. I suggest cutting squares of a sanitary wipe for him to use. I will keep you appraised of my findings, Strike-Commander.”

Jack nodded and picked up the adorable little body of his husband. “Thank you, Dr. Ziegler. McCree, Amari, if you would be so kind as to accompany me back to our quarters?”

The other two nodded, and Ana led the way out of the examination room.

* * *

 

_Jesse_

 

 “He needs clothes,” Captain Amari said as soon as they were in the commanders’ suite, a place Jesse had never been and wasn’t feeling real comfortable _being_ in. “Aside from preserving his dignity, his smaller body will get cold much faster. He will also need _shoes_ , both to protect his feet and to keep them warm, and I am afraid I have no suggestions for that except ones meant for dolls.”

The Strike-Commander looked up from cuddling his smol husband, and boy was that something that made Jesse feel awkward. “I’m not sure doll clothes are going to fit him, Ana. Dolls don’t usually move much.”

“I can sew him some,” Jesse said to everyone’s surprise, including his. “Just need some stretchy fabric, like a tee-shirt. Something meant to move with you. Sewing was an important skill in my youth,” he protested, although no one had said anything.

Something in the armload of clothes and armor he was carrying beeped, and the Strike-Commander started like he’d forgotten they existed in the excitement of his husband being shrunk. Jesse dug out the beeping device and silenced it.

“Commander’s got a meeting,” he said sheepishly. “Eleven to one. Uh…guess that’s _my_ meeting now, huh?”

Morrison and Amari exchanged a look.

“Go to the meeting,” said the Strike-Commander. “Come back here afterwards; we’ll discuss how we’re going to handle Gabriel being…” He glanced down at his smol husband, who looked up at him with that damn cute little smile. “…small.”

Jesse set the pile onto one of the chairs, tossed his boss’s husband a salute, and left while juggling plans for the meeting with plans for sewing clothes.

The meeting, thankfully, was easy to get through and wrapped up early. Hinting that Commander Reyes was dealing with something big –  and would not be pleased with anything that took his attention away from it – was _very_ effective in making people get to the point, and Jesse wound up in his quarters at twelve-thirty with half an hour to find his sewing kit and grab some cookies from the mess hall because he was _starving_ from the breakfast he’d skipped and the lunch he hadn’t had yet, but he didn’t want to show up with food when the Strike-Commander probably hadn’t eaten, either, and that wasn’t even getting into what they were gonna feed Reyes. So he had three chocolate-chip cookies in a paper napkin to hold him over.

By the time he got to the commanders’ suite, it was one cookie.

“Enter,” growled Morrison.

Jesse entered.

The Strike-Commander was sitting at the round wooden table with his arms spread while his smol husband ran from one hand to the other, giggling. Each time he reached one of his husband’s hands, he threw himself into it and got lifted up to have a kiss planted on the top of his head. Then the Strike-Commander set him back down, where he gleefully ran to the other hand to do it all over again. It was cute as all heck, but _deeply_ unnerving.

“According to Winston and Dr. Ziegler,” the Strike-Commander said absently, “he’s himself, just…distilled. Concentrated.”

“Then why isn’t he busting my balls?” Jesse asked warily, setting the cookie down while he pulled out a chair and sat.

“His brain’s only big enough to hold one thought at a time. He gets fixated on whatever thought’s at the top of the pile, and he won’t move on until that’s been addressed.”

There was tiredness and tension in the man’s voice, and Jesse was just thinking how horrible it had to be to have your husband reduced to… _that_ …when the little guy noticed, and made a beeline for, his cookie.

“Hey!” Jesse snatched the cookie up, holding it out of reach.

Smol Gabriel was undeterred. “Give!” he demanded in a piping little voice, both hands stretched as far as they could reach, which wasn’t even halfway up his big ol’ babydoll head. “Give! Give!”

“Aw, c’mon _jefe,_ I ain’t had lunch yet and you _know_ I skipped breakfast…”

“Give!”

The demand sounded just a bit whiny now, and were those tears in his eyes?

“Giiiive!”

Aw heck, that was the lower lip trembling…

Jesse’s resolve was already crumbling when suddenly, there was a _very_ strong hand wrapped around his wrist. Alarmed, he followed it to its owner and discovered the Strike-Commander giving him an absolutely _terrifying_ look, like he was going to rip Jesse’s arm off.

_“Give. Him. The. Cookie.”_

“Alright! Alright! We cool,” he babbled, a tiny corner of his brain wondering how Mr. Noble Strike-Commander was somehow _scarier_ than Commander Reyes at his scariest.

The fist retreated and, slowly, Jesse lowered his hand until his smol boss could grab the cookie out of it. Instantly, all the distress evaporated and he sat down to nibble the cookie that was almost as big as his head, absently making little ‘num, num’ sounds as he went to town on it while Jesse’s stomach growled mournfully.

“He needs some real food,” the Strike-Commander announced. “You haven’t had lunch yet, and neither have I. Why don’t you get us all something to eat? I’ve sent Ana out to try to find him something to keep him entertained, because as much as I’d like to tell the world to sit and spin until Gabe’s back to normal, I’ve had to reschedule a fairly important call already and my schedule doesn’t have a lot of wiggle room.”

Jesse opened his mouth.

“Before you say anything, he doesn’t have the brainpower to concentrate on any video longer than about thirty seconds.”

“…I’m thinking burgers,” he said instead of suggesting children’s cartoons.

The Strike-Commander sighed, one hand rubbing his forehead. “Sure. Sounds good. No pickles, extra onions, and whatever else comes on a cheeseburger wherever you wind up going is fine. You know how Gabe takes his, I guess.”

“Just ketchup,” Jesse confirmed. “Hey, uh…I brought my sewing kit. If you’ve got some cloth for me to work with, I’ll watch ‘im after lunch. Boss doesn’t have much going on today; I can handle it from his phone.”

“I appreciate that,” he said. “Thank you.”

The solemn, earnest look he was getting made him want to squirm. “No problem, sir. I’ll just…uh…go get lunch.”

Before his boss’s husband could say anything else, he fled.

Travel time into town meant it occurred to him that you couldn’t just cut a cheeseburger up real small and feed it to a guy less than a foot tall. Reyes…

It didn’t feel _right_ , calling that cute little thing ‘Reyes’, but he wasn’t real comfortable calling his boss by first name, either. In fact, it was hard to remember that the lil’ fella _was_ Gabriel Reyes. He was just so…smol.

Smol Gabe. Jesse rolled the name around in his head. Yeah, that would work. Smol Gabe would need something _flat_ to fit into his mouth, because no one wanted to eat a cheeseburger sideways.

He went to a fast-food joint and ordered smol Gabe a cheeseburger kids’ meal, along with more adult burgers for himself and Morrison. And some coffee, because he had the feeling they were both going to need the energy.

Captain Amari was trying to distract smol Gabe with a coloring book and some little crayons, Jesse saw when Morrison called for him to enter the suite, but the little guy wasn’t interested. He was making those heartbreaking little whimpers and looked close to tears.

“Oh thank god,” the Strike-Commander breathed when Jesse held up the bag of take-out. “He’s hungry.”

Immediately, Jesse set the drink carrier on the table and opened the bag. The first fry his fingers touched was pulled out and offered to smol Gabe, whose face lit up. Jesse handed it over, smiling as the little guy sat down and started eating it like a hamster with a carrot stick. That bought him time to identify the Strike-Commander’s burger and hand it over, along with one of the fry containers and one of the coffees. Then he took the kids’ cheeseburger out and smushed it flat against the table before unwrapping it. Good thing he’d grabbed a knife, he thought as he mentally measured it against smol Gabe’s mouth, because that was _way_ too big for his little arms to hold.

He cut it into wedges. Smol Gabe was already eating the first one before he finished.

“Have you taken care of children before?” Captain Amari asked curiously as he opened the bottle of chocolate milk that came with the kids’ meal and poured some into the little paper cup Morrison must have retrieved from the bathroom.

“No, ma’am,” he said, shaking his head. “Boss always says to not let your plans get in the way of reality, to look at what you’re working with and make plans from there. He has small hands and needs small food, so…” he shrugged and took a gulp of his coffee, then dug out the creamers and poured in three of them.

“Give!” said a small voice.

Jesse looked at Morrison, who shook his head with that terrifying look.

“Angela Ziegler was adamant that he not be given stimulants. His little body can’t handle them.”

“But there’s no chance of making him understand that, is there?” Jesse looked at smol Gabe, who was clearly not about to take no for an answer. “I’ll…make you a mocha,” he said weakly.

Carefully, he took one of the empty creamer cups and poured in a few drops of coffee, then filled it with chocolate milk. Smol Gabe took the cup and sipped happily before going back to his cheeseburger slices.

“I found some old shirts neither of us have wanted to throw out,” Morrison said after several bites of his burger. “They’re folded on the table, there. There’s a pair of sweatpants, a pair of slacks, and flannel pajama bottoms, but I want to make him a quilt out of those last two so leave me at least half the material.”

Jesse swallowed his bite of barbeque bacon cheeseburger. “You got it, sir.”

Morrison frowned at him. “You’re watching my husband for me. That makes you _family._ Call me Jack.”

“Yes, s….Jack.”

Morrison gave him a tired smile. “Nice catch.”

While they ate, Captain Amari calmly opened and cut up a couple of ‘moist towelettes’ – the individually wrapped type you’d get from a barbeque place – and packed the small squares in the sort of clear plastic container he’d seen agents bring dressing for their salads in. She tucked it behind a cardboard screen and smiled at his confused look.

“I was able to locate a novelty ashtray shaped like a toilet,” she informed him, amused. “It even has a tank that holds water. You will need to dump it out after it has been used, of course, but…”

“Better than taking a dump in a paper cup,” he agreed. “You- uh…where’s he going?”

Smol Gabe had eaten a third of his burger, drained the small cup of chocolate milk and the creamer cup of ‘mocha’, and was climbing onto the stack of folded clothes.

“He’s tired,” Morrison said in a soft voice. “He’s eaten, and now he needs to take a nap and digest.”

“He’s gonna need a bed,” Jesse muttered to Amari, who hummed agreement.

“Uh,” announced smol Gabe firmly, arms outstretched towards his husband.

“Uh?” Jesse repeated.

Morrison flushed slightly. “Hug,” he clarified. He stood and leaned over to lay a kiss on his husband’s head and be chin-hugged and kissed in return. “I’ve got a meeting to go to, babe,” he said quietly. “I won’t be here when you wake up, but McCree will and he’ll watch over you. Okay?”

“Uh oo,” smol Gabe said happily.

“I love you too, Gabe, and I’ll come back right after the meeting, I promise. But if I’m not here when you wake up, don’t worry.”

Smol Gabe just pulled the handkerchief toga higher up on his body and lay down, asleep instantly. The Strike-Commander sighed and tugged a fold of fabric out to serve as a blanket, worried wrinkles crinkling his forehead.

“Thanks for lunch,” he sighed, “and thanks for watching him. I’ll…be gone a couple of hours.”

“I’ll be here,” Jesse promised.

With a distinctly worried look at his smol husband, Morrison grabbed his pad and left the suite.

The silence sat for a couple of seconds.

“He needs a bed,” Jesse repeated, “and he needs silverware and a smaller cup because that was like watching him drink out of a bucket.”

“Dollhouse furnishings,” Captain Amari suggested. “Would you like me to find you some sites?”

He shook his head. “Nah. I’ll do it. Can’t work on his clothes until he wakes up anyways; he’s sleeping on the material.”

Amari stood with a thoughtful noise and went rummaging around various closets and cabinets before coming back with a shoebox that looked more than spacious for smol Gabe’s little body. With more finesse than Jesse had expected, she pulled the flannel pajama bottoms out of the pile so smoothly that the little guy didn’t stir. She folded them up into the shoebox, making a comfortably thick pad in the smaller space, and reached for the sleeping smol.

Before she touched him, however, he sat bolt upright. “Jack?” he said, half asleep.

He and Amari exchanged an alarmed look.

“Jack? Jack!” Smol Gabe patted the stack of clothes next to him, as if summoning his husband to bed.

With a sniper’s reflexive speed, Amari darted across the room and snatched the incredibly expensive one-sixth scale Strike-Commander Jack Morrison commemorative limited-edition figure with over 30 points of articulation, actual hair, and Real-Feel Synthskin™ from its stand on a shelf.

“Look,” she said a little desperately as she hurried back. “Here’s Jack. Jack’s going to bed. You want to go to sleep with him?”

“Jack,” smol Gabe chirped happily.

Amari laid the figure in the shoebox and gently picked smol Gabe up to set him down beside it. He promptly snuggled up to it, kissed it on the cheek, and fell asleep again. She took the shirt he’d been laying on and unfolded it, draping it over both him and the figure.

“Crisis averted,” she said dryly. “I teased Jack for owning a limited edition figure of himself, but it seems I owe him an apology.”

“I didn’t even know he had one of those,” Jesse admitted. “Knew they existed, yeah. But why would he…?”

“A gift for publicity,” she answered. “You’re sure you have everything under control?”

He shrugged. “He’s got his cuddle buddy, he’s got stuff to eat and drink and I’m sure I can keep him entertained when he wakes up. In the meantime, I’ll find some dollhouse stuff to order and start makin’ him something more comfy than my handkerchief to wear.”

To his surprise, Captain Amari hugged him. “If you need anything, reach out to me.”

“Will do, ma’am,” Jesse said a bit breathlessly. “Uh…thanks.”

“Thank _you_ for doing this,” she said.

Then she left, and he shook his head.

“Right,” he muttered to himself. “Let’s start on those clothes.”

* * *

 

_Jack_

 

The meeting, to put it mildly, _sucked_. Jack had spent the whole thing half-distracted worrying about Gabe, wondering if Dr. Ziegler and Winston would be able to find a way to reverse whatever had been done to him, wondering if his husband would spend the rest of his life barely able to remember who he was. Afterwards, he’d squandered a precious half-hour rescheduling the rest of the day’s calls and appointments with the vague excuse that something had ‘come up’ with Commander Reyes. The walk back to their quarters passed in a daze of making plans to bake, because it was hard to be anxious while he was baking, and he’d almost forgotten that McCree would be there when he opened the door to see the cowboy sitting at the table doing something that was making Gabe laugh.

“Welcome back, boss,” McCree said as the door closed. “I know, you said to call you Jack, but with the current situation and all, I’m _kinda_ answering directly to you, so that makes you my boss until this is all cleared up.”

The cowboy had his hands in front of him, fingers spread to form a ladder, and Gabe was climbing them. As soon as he reached the top of one hand, McCree would move the bottom hand up to form the new top while lowering the hand Gabe was clinging to. His husband was no longer wrapped in a handkerchief; his shirt had been sewn from a grey tee and he was wearing ‘sweatpants’ crafted from a navy blue one. The instant he saw Jack, he stopped climbing.

“Jack!”

Little hands stretched out towards him, forgetting to grip McCree’s fingers, and only the younger man’s quick reflexes kept him from tumbling the six or eight inches to the surface of the table. Jack collected his little husband and cuddled him to his chest.

“Report,” he half-asked while siting at the table.

“Captain Amari got him settled in that shoebox for a nap – he didn’t want to nap without you, but she put your …uh… figure in it and he cuddled right up. I made him half a dozen tee-shirts and four pairs of sweatpants, including the ones he’s wearing, and two flannel nightshirts. Also two pairs of regular pants with little drawstring belts. He woke up about half an hour ago, used the ashtray toilet, ate two more wedges of cheeseburger and drank three ounces of chocolate milk before napping for another fifteen minutes,” McCree listed off crisply. “I ordered some dollhouse silverware to be delivered tomorrow so he can eat stuff without having to pick up handfuls of mashed potatoes or somethin’ and I cut a plastic coffee stirrer in half for him to use as a straw because he’ll down the creamer cups in one go but picking up the paper cup is super awkward. He likes drinking out of my thimble, though, so I’ll leave that here.”

The scraps of tee-shirt material would be perfect for making a little quilt, Jack realized. “Good work,” he told McCree absently, half his mind lost in thoughts of quilting. Gabe’s shoebox bed would need a mattress and a pillow along with the quilt to keep him warm, and maybe he could make a quilted carry-pouch…

“Boss, you listening?”

Jack shook himself out of his thoughts. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

McCree gave him a sympathetic look. “Was thinking that if the pattern holds up, he’s not gonna sleep through the night. He’ll need to get up to pee, if nothing else, with that little bladder of his – but betcha twenty bucks he’ll wake up cryin’ because he’s hungry.”

“What do you suggest?” Jack asked, feeling the worry curl tighter in his gut.

“We cut a little door in the shoebox, for starters. Let him enter and leave at will. Put out a plate of food that’ll keep at room temperature and plenty of water.”

“Good start,” he said shortly. “Let’s add a security camera, move the whole thing to the coffee table, and I’ll sleep on the couch. Because honestly,” he said, holding one hand up before McCree could protest, “I’m not going to get much sleep otherwise.”

Gabe grumbled wordless protest at no longer having both of Jack’s hands cupping him, something that made him smile softly.

“Sorry, babe.” Once both hands were curled around his happily-humming husband, he turned his attention back to McCree. “I cleared the rest of today’s schedule and I’m going to be stress-baking for the next few hours. If you wanted to join us in the kitchen, I don’t think an extra set of eyes would be a bad thing.”

McCree gave him a solemn look, then nodded. “Still need to wrangle Commander Reyes’s stuff anyway. I’ll help you pack up shop and transport, and when we’re hungry I’ll grab us some dinner.”

With Jack carrying the shoebox containing the limited edition Strike-Commander figure Gabriel had nicknamed mini-Jack and his shrunken husband both nestled on a makeshift flannel bed, and McCree somehow carrying _everything else,_ they made their way to the large room that was officially the Officers’ Mess but unofficially was The Officers’ Staff Lounge And Where Jack Bakes When He’s Stressed. McCree set up Gabe’s little improvised bathroom, an art station, a snack station with chocolate milk and cold cheeseburger wedges, and then borrowed a knife to cut a doorway into the shoebox. Two vertical cuts six inches apart on one long side resulted in a flap that folded down but could be pulled up and loosely tucked back into place. Gabe entertained himself by ‘opening’ and ‘closing’ the door for a few minutes, and by the time he got bored of that, Jack was well into mixing up the chocolate-chip cookie dough – with mini morsels, of course.

After that, it was an exciting period of his little husband wanting to get into everything and help, which resulted in a teaspoon of baking soda going everywhere as he tried (and failed) to measure it out, and McCree recording Gabe’s almost-successful attempts to fetch eggs out of the carton. The younger man distracted him with the chocolate chips, and then after that with crayons and a coloring book, leaving Jack to crush his anxiety with the routine of making dozens upon dozens of tiny chocolate-chip cookies – because, of course, they had to be small enough for Gabe to eat comfortably.

That didn’t stop him from making three _enormous_ cookies out of the last batch, of course.

Somewhere after the first couple dozen cookies had come out of the oven, McCree mentioned Chinese take-out for dinner and absently, Jack had agreed. Gabe was curled up around the figure he’d joked in the past was Jack’s Mini-Me, taking a nap, and they agreed he wasn’t likely to wake until around when McCree got back. Jack was stacking tiny cookies in a storage tub while the giant cookies baked when the cowboy returned with a 2-liter bottle of orange soda and a paper bag that had been stapled shut.

“Got your chicken lo mein combo,” McCree said as he started unloading the bag, waking Gabe. “Boss’s General Tso, my beef with broccoli, here’s the egg rolls, aaaand they threw in an order of crab rangoons.”

Jack frowned. “He can’t eat that with his hands, even if it weren’t too hot. We’ll need to cut it up for him.”

The cowboy’s face fell. “Aw, heck, and the dollhouse silverware hasn’t gotten here yet. Rice…he can’t eat _that_ with his hands, either. Egg rolls?”

Gabe was fussing at the waxed paper bag holding them, and Jack unrolled the top of it so he could pull one out, but no matter what angle he tried to get at it from, he couldn’t get it in his mouth to bite. Cutting it, Jack discovered when he grabbed one of the plastic knives, only resulted in a messy pile of shredded cabbage and torn wrapper with a tiny husband picking at it in disappointment. Jesse had cut up some chicken and broccoli, but it was still going to be less than a neat dining experience. The crab rangoons could be torn apart, but that would be only marginally less messy to eat.

“This was a mistake,” the cowboy said mournfully. “None of it is smol friendly.”

But Gabriel was too hungry to care; Jack loaded a plate with bits of General Tso’s and broccoli, mangled egg roll and eviscerated crab rangoon, a pile of fried rice and a small heap of his lo mein. A little paper cup of orange soda with a clipped coffee stirrer as a straw rounded the meal off, and the adorably little Gabriel happily went to town on it all with his bare hands. Fistfuls of rice or shredded cabbage went into his mouth, chunks of breaded chicken or broccoli that filled his hands and made his cheeks look like a chipmunk, and he used both hands to eat cream cheese-laden wonton shreds like pieces of floppy pizza. Halfway through the meal, the timer went off and Jack took the giant cookies out to cool. Thankfully, Gabe was too busy stuffing his tiny face to notice, a lo mein noodle in one hand and a thin strip of chicken in his other fist. Just as Jack was starting to wonder how much his little stomach could hold, because he was getting visibly rounder, he let out a belch louder than any of them had been expecting and promptly clapped his hands with glee at his performance. Then he held them out to Jack with an unhappy expression.

“He wants ‘em cleaned,” McCree volunteered through a mouthful of fried rice.

Jack would have cleaned his little husband even without the pleading expression, but Gabe was so _miserable_ with his hands and face covered in oils and sauces, and he smiled _so brilliantly_ when Jack gently cleaned him off with a damp paper towel. When he was free of the remnants of dinner, he held both arms out and made an imperious sound. Jack submitted himself to his husband’s tiny kiss, laid a gentle smooch on the top of his little head, and smiled softly as Gabe fairly waddled into the shoebox and snuggled up to Mini-Jack for a nap.

“Any idea what to feed him for breakfast?” McCree asked quietly.

“None whatsoever,” he groaned, not taking his eyes off his sleeping husband. They hadn’t even cleaned up dinner, he hadn’t finished with putting the cookies away or doing the dishes, and he hadn’t gotten further in planning than getting started on that quilt before bed. Breakfast may as well have been a week away.

“Alright,” the cowboy said easily. “I’m gonna go out shopping, then. Got some ideas for how to feed the boss while he’s too smol to eat normal food. You good getting him back to your quarters?”

“I’ll call Ana if I need help.” Jack answered. “Thank you.”

“Anything you need,” he returned in that same easy tone. “His schedule is a lot easier to rearrange than yours is. I’ll stop in later tonight, okay?”

“Fine,” Jack sighed, raising his eyes to smile tiredly at the younger man. “Thank you again.”

McCree nodded and left, throwing the trash from dinner out on his way, and Jack turned to the aftermath of his stress-baking. The kitchen wasn’t going to just clean itself…

* * *

 

_Jesse_

 

Jesse hummed as he put groceries away. Tortillas and thin-sliced lunchmeat, angel hair pasta and tiny shrimp, thin pretzel sticks and an assortment of fresh fruit. Jumbo pasta shells, the smaller ‘regular’ variety, and an icing bag with a fine tip. Cheeses and pasta sauce and lean ground beef. Hot dogs and breadsticks, baby pickles and quail eggs, the ingredients for tacos and a bag of flat, circular corn chips. A couple of plastic shot glasses and a package each of plastic tasting forks and spoons that had been fortuitous finds. And, after some intense looking, he’d found some non-alcoholic beer because smol or not, there was no way Reyes would go longer than a couple of days without a beer and he didn’t want to be between the crying smol and the enraged husband because he was _pretty sure_ Reyes couldn’t tolerate alcohol in his smol state.

When he knocked on the door to the commanders’ quarters, Morrison called for him to enter. There were multiple tubs of little bite-sized cookies stacked up by the table, with one of them by the couch and a small pile of cookies on a plate. Smol Gabe was cheerfully drawing with crayons longer than his arm, while his husband seemed pretty content on the couch, sewing something.

“Making a little quilt,” he said when he saw Jesse watching. “The flannel will do for a mattress for now, but I want him to have something better than a shirt to keep him warm.”

“I didn’t take you for a quilter,” Jesse said, settling into a chair on the other side of the coffee table.

Morrison smiled gently. “Learned from my grandma. Insisted, really. I was six. She set me up with some scraps and taught me the stitches and we’d sit there, quilting together, while ma was at work. That first week, my fingers were all full of holes.” He laughed softly. “But I got better. Too stubborn to give up. Haven’t done any quilting in years, but it’s…soothing. And less labor-intensive than baking, which is good because I think we’re going to be eating cookies for months.”

“There’s always sharing with the rest of Overwatch,” Jesse offered. “Just leave piles in the break rooms; they’ll vanish. Or we could hold a bake sale.”

“Don’t push your luck,” Morrison said, but he was laughing. “I had Ana bring me a security camera and set it up, so between the cookies and some paper cups full of water I think Gabe’s got everything he needs for the night…and _I’ve_ got everything that will _hopefully_ let me sleep at least a little.”

“Then I’ll take care of breakfast,” Jesse said, standing up. “I know how early the commander starts his days…”

“Earlier than that,” was the correction. “By an hour. I’ll call you if he’s hungry. Don’t worry about me, I’ll grab a bagel or some cereal.”

“Like hell you will, sir.” Jesse’s voice was firm. “If that’s all you want, then that’s all I’ll bring you, but you _know_ if he’s eating and you’re not, he’s gonna worry.”

The guilty expression on the Strike-Commander’s face was surprisingly gratifying.

“Alright. I’m gonna go grab some shut-eye. You two have a good night now, y’hear? Call if you need anything.”

“I’ll do that,” he promised. “Thank you.”


	2. Chapter 2

_Jesse_

 

When he woke up, Jesse first slapped his alarm off and then spent a few seconds waiting for his brain to switch from dream to awake and remind him why he’d set it in the first place.

Reyes was smol.

 _Right_.

Half an hour later he had a covered tray prepared and was knocking on the door to the commanders’ quarters. A bleary-eyed Morrison opened it, smol Gabe sleeping in the crook of his arm, and accepted the mug of extra-strong coffee Jesse had brewed for him.

“Brought your cereal,” he said as he set the tray on the table, “but also some pancakes and bacon and eggs.”

The large plate came off the tray first: a stack of buttermilk pancakes with butter melting on them, followed by a small pitcher of maple syrup. The first smaller plate held three fried eggs and four strips of bacon. The second smaller plate held a dozen tiny pancakes the size of old half-dollar coins and four tiny fried quail eggs, sunny side up, along with a single strip of bacon. One shot glass held syrup, one held orange juice, and the third was full of cream mixed with decaf coffee. A tasting fork sat on smol Gabe’s plate, while Jesse placed full-sized silverware next to Morrison’s and finally, unloaded the glass of orange juice, the bowl of Cheerios, and the pitcher of milk.

As though drawn by the delicious aromas, Morrison sat down and smol Gabe woke with a start. Jesse picked him up and held him in one arm, the shot glass of lukewarm decaf in his other hand, and helped him drink. He struggled to be set down after a few mouthfuls, and made a beeline for his breakfast while his husband poured syrup on his pancakes and started cutting them up. Jesse took a moment to congratulate himself on the tasting fork, which admittedly was a little long but with the short little arms smol Gabe had, still functional. He was delighted by the smol breakfast, even if he needed help pouring the syrup on his pancakes, and when he sat down to eat the strip of bacon almost as long as he was tall, Jesse took a picture.

“This is really good,” the Strike-Commander mumbled through a mouthful of eggs and bacon. “And if Gabe could form more than one word at a time, I’m sure he’d say the same.”

Jesse grinned. “He doesn’t need words; just look at him chowing down. I figure he’ll…”

Smol Gabe belched, blinked, and drained half the shot glass of orange juice before yawning widely.

“I’ll just…grab the bed,” Jesse finished dryly.

With kisses delivered and smol Gabe napping in his shoebox on the table, his husband polished off his pancakes and coffee and let out a belch of his own.

“I think I might actually be awake now,” he said with a rueful grin. “Kept waking up every half hour to check on Gabriel. Nearly had a heart attack the first time I woke up and he was gone, but he’d just gone for a snack. Did that twice during the night.”

“So he needs to eat about…”

“Every two or three hours,” Morrison confirmed. “He had more Chinese just before bed.”

Jesse nodded. “That gives us a timeframe, then. And he slept in the box okay?”

The older man looked chagrined. “Towards the morning, he got fussy and wanted to sleep with or on me. That’s when I stopped sleeping, because I didn’t want to risk accidentally hurting him if I rolled over or something.”

“D’you think it was because you were there?” Jesse asked carefully. “What I mean is…out of sight, out of his smol mind. If you slept in your bed and I slept on the couch in your place…?”

Morrison rubbed his temples. “It’s worth a try. I need to grab a shower and try to make myself presentable. Hopefully I can sneak out before he wakes up. Thanks for breakfast.”

“Hey, no sweat. You go get cleaned up, boss.”

That earned him a tired smile, and Morrison retreated to the bedroom. Moments later, the shower turned on.

“Gonna have to bathe you in the sink, I think,” Jesse murmured to the sleeping form of his shrunken boss. “Maybe make you a little bubble bath with the body wash. I think you’d like that.”

Looked like Morrison hadn’t finished the quilt, he noticed. His tiny boss was still sleeping under a shirt, and his head...

Jesse frowned. He needed to sew a smol pillow, because smol Gabe _couldn’t_ be comfortable with his head tilted like that. While everything was still quiet, he packed the empty dishes onto the tray and moved it out of the way before finding the pile of clothes to be sacrificed. He’d passed over the sweatpants initially because the fleecy inside was too much for a smol body, but maybe…it would take some work to cut the material into small enough bits, but it could be made into a decent filling for a little pillow and then he could layer the rest in an outer layer of slacks and put together a workable mattress. The flannel would be freed up to get repurposed, and he figured smol Gabe would rather cuddle up to a mini-husband in flannel PJs than one in full dress uniform.

He’d gotten the pillow shell done and made good progress on preparing the stuffing when Morrison emerged, damp and a bit disheveled but presentable.

“Makin’ him a pillow,” Jesse said before he could ask. “Gonna make a mattress after that. Want me to save you any of these sweatpants for the quilt?”

The Strike-Commander shook his head. “He’s small enough that it doesn’t need a filling layer; I’m just doubling the tee-shirt material and sewing it to the backing. I have a meeting, can you-”

“Jack?”

Jesse watched as despair overshadowed Morrison at his smol husband’s sleepy voice calling his name.

“Jack?” Smol Gabe stood up, blinking, and held his arms out to be picked up. “Jack!”

“I have to go to a meeting, babe, but McCree will…”

The words trailed off as smol Gabe’s big eyes filled with tears.

“Sweetie, no, I have to-”

_“Jaaack!”_

The Strike-Commander scooped up his husband and cuddled him, unable to withstand the whimpering noises accompanying his name. “I have a _meeting_ , sweetheart,” he pled. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours, I promise. I’m coming back.”

Smol Gabe was unconvinced, judging by how hard he was trying to cling to his husband’s neck and repeating ‘Jack! Jack!’ in heart-wrenching tones.

Jesse cleared his throat and stood up smartly. “Commander Reyes, sir, we need to get you cleaned up for that thing _you_ have.”

Instantly, smol Gabe stopped crying and kissed the corner of his husband’s mouth. “Uh oo,” he enunciated vaguely in a more casual tone.

“Love you too, babe,” Morrison returned in relief. “McCree will take care of you. I’ll see you in a bit.”

And with that, he handed his smol husband over, saluted, and beat a hasty retreat.

“Right. Let’s go get you cleaned up, boss,” Jesse said sauntering through the bedroom and into the bathroom.

Smol Gabe, it turned out, _loved_ the makeshift bubble bath and splashed around happily for half an hour before finally getting tired. Jesse rinsed him off and swaddled him in a fluffy hand towel, then brought him back to the living room and set him on the coffee table so he could choose clean clothes. He distracted himself with the crayons and paper after that, giving Jesse enough time to finish the pillow before using his little ashtray toilet and coming back around the privacy screen to put his little fists on his hips and frown at the cowboy.

“What’s up, _jefe?”_ Jesse asked.

The sounds smol Gabe uttered didn’t make much sense, but it was hard to misinterpret pointing at his open mouth. Jesse carried him to the table, where he devoured the rest of his breakfast and looked around for more. All that was left was the cereal and milk, but Jesse poured a handful of dry cereal onto the small plate and poured milk into an empty shot glass, and smol Gabe entertained himself quite nicely by picking up one piece of cereal at a time, dunking it in the milk, and then shoving it into his mouth. The shell of the mattress had been sewn together by the time he lost interest in eating, and Jesse arranged the Strike-Commander figure to be laying on its side, head on the pillow, arm out to drape over the smol as he yawned and trundled into the box for a nap. Smol Gabe kissed the figure on the cheek, chirped some sort of incoherent endearment, and tugged the arm over himself as he lay down as the little spoon. Jesse couldn’t help but take a picture before tugging the makeshift blanket over them. Then he took another picture and settled in to sew.

Once the mattress was done, Jesse emptied and refilled the little toilet and transferred the whole miniature bathroom to the table. Smol Gabe awoke almost as soon as he’d done that, and toddled off to relieve himself while Jesse swapped out folded flannel for mattress and did some rough measurements with the figure. 

When the little guy came back out from behind the screen, he was wearing a businesslike expression that looked out of place on his smol face. “Own,” he demanded, one hand out expectantly.

Jesse swallowed. “Uh. Phone? You want your phone, boss?”

“Own,” he repeated with a nod.

The cowboy laid Reyes’s phone on the table and watched as the little guy crouched down to unlock it. Then he navigated to the messaging app and opened a message to his husband.

Crud. Had it been an act all along? Jesse craned his neck to see what Reyes was typing-

I <3 U

And the heart was a scribbled thing done using the touch portion of the app. Jesse swallowed his grin as smol Gabe sent the message and then began a new one, forsaking the keyboard to just draw with the touch portion. It was nowhere near as advanced as an actual art program, but it kept him amused and Jesse settled in to sew the Strike-Commander figure some flannel PJs. Naturally, he’d only gotten them cut out when smol Gabe started getting fussy, and Jesse plucked the phone away from him just long enough to open the games section and look for something appropriate for a smol-

Wait.

Commander Reyes had _Pac-Man_ on his phone? Jesse had it open in a flash and set the phone back down in front of smol Gabe, instantly entrancing him. One little hand touched Pac-Man, and then drew a line towards the dots. The yellow figure followed, eliciting delighted laughter that had Jesse scrambling for his own phone to take video. The excitement of discovery was a roller-coaster: dismay when Pac-Man got eaten, glee when the cherries bounced their way across the screen, utter astonishment when he directed the yellow figure off one side chasing them and it appeared on the _other_ side. That gave Jesse plenty of time to finish the flannel and put it on the figure.

“I think it’s time for a snack,” Jesse announced as he admired his handiwork. “The Strike-Commander’ll be getting out of his meeting soon, and I’ve got a thing to take care of once he does, but you’ll get hungry long before that’s over. So whaddaya say we mosey down to the kitchen and get you a little somethin’ before he gets back?” Guiltily, he looked around. “I mean…not that cookies aren’t tasty, but I know you gotta be hankerin’ for salty or savory about now.”

Solemnly, smol Gabe nodded at him.

“Alright.” Jesse held his hands out, and the little fella climbed into them. “Let’s see what we can find.”

Although he’d meant to fetch a handful of pretzel sticks, he got to the kitchen and opened the cabinet and smol Gabe said “chip!” in the clearest word he’d used all day aside from ‘Jack’. Obediently, Jesse grabbed a snack-sized bag of Reyes’s favorite salt and vinegar chips and immediately opened it up to hand over the biggest chip sitting on top. With his passenger momentarily placated, he grabbed the pretzel sticks and a handful of fresh cherries and booked it.

Once back in the commanders’ quarters, he emptied the chips out onto a plate and added a few pretzel sticks. Smol Gabe immediately grabbed one and began eating it like he was playing a flute, cheeks puffing out as he fed it slowly into his mouth, nibble-chomping it as he went. After taking a picture, Jesse got out his pocketknife and started slicing cherries into halves, and then quarters, removing the pits as he did.

“I see you let him have his phone,” the Strike-Commander announced as soon as the door opened, making the cowboy jump. He sounded amused, at least, and not annoyed.

“He insisted,” Jesse said loftily. “Oh, uh, he likes playing Pac-Man. Might want to set up a tablet on a stand and try some older, simpler video games as well.”

“And you’re feeding him…what?”

Smol Gabe looked up, directed a brilliant grin at his husband, and held out the contents of his hands: a slice of cherry and a broken flake of potato chip the size of a thumbnail.

“Just a snack,” Jesse assured him, finishing the last cherry and cleaning his knife. “I’ve got a thing I gotta take care of for Blackwatch, but I was thinking I could hit that barbeque place after and bring you both some lunch.”

Morrison gave him a tired smile. “That would be amazing, thank you. I’m just going to pack him up and take him to my office; there’s things I have to do that I can’t do here.”

“You got it,” Jesse promised. “I’ll text for your order when I get there.”

* * *

 

_Jack_

 

Jack was finding it difficult to get any work done.

It wasn’t just the exhaustion, although he _was_ tempted to put his head down and nap while his shrunken husband napped away a belly full of chips and cherries. The fact that the love of his life was the size of a toy and Winston _still_ had no idea how to get him back to normal was a distraction in and of itself, one that made it hard to concentrate on things that _should_ have been a higher priority. He was able to knock out a few tasks while Gabriel slept, but once he woke up…

He covered his face again, then let his hands drop. “Peekaboo!”

Gabriel shrieked with delight and clapped his little hands.

How could he resist that innocent laughter?

“One more time,” he said, trying to sound firm. “Then I’ve got paperwork to do, and so do you.”

Gabriel nodded solemnly.

Jack covered his face, then pulled his hands away. “Peekaboo! And now it’s time to work, okay?”

The serious little nod Gabe gave him was almost too adorable, but he went over to the corner of the desk where his things had been set up and frowned cutely at the crayons and paper before selecting one.

Relieved, Jack tried to get as much done as possible and was successful…for a while. The demands of his position seemed incredibly petty and irrelevant, and he found himself getting frustrated, the world narrowing to the screen before him until-

“No.”

-suddenly Gabe was there, doing his best to tug Jack’s hand away from the screen. When that failed, he sat down right in the center of the workspace and gave his startled husband a look that tried to be firm but wound up pleading.

“No,” he said in his piping little voice.

“But babe, I have to finish this report for the Prime Minister.”

“No.”

“But…” Jack let the protest trail off. Those were tears in his tiny husband’s eyes.

Sensing his victory, Gabriel rushed to Jack’s arm and began scaling his sleeve, tiny fingers and toes gripping, until he’d climbed up to the shoulder and could kneel, one hand on Jack’s ear for balance, to lay a butterfly-light kiss on his husband’s cheek.

Even distilled down to basic needs and nature, he still did his best to make Jack happy. Sighing, he picked Gabriel up and cuddled him while with the other, he dashed off a quick note to the Prime Minister, explaining that the report would be delayed because something had come up that Commander Reyes needed him for.

McCree’s text was a welcome diversion, and he sent back a request for pulled pork, mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob. Then he added that they’d be in the Officers’ Mess and began packing up.

Ana was just finishing her lunch when he arrived, and she expressed her approval for the bed upgrades while helping him set everything up on the table.

“You _can_ delegate to me,” she chided when he told her how much work he _hadn’t_ gotten done.

“I _have_ delegated a lot to you,” he sighed. “Tomorrow should be better. McCree offered to spend the night on the couch. But he’s got responsibilities, too.”

“Sleep on the couch?” Ana frowned. “Why…?”

“Gabe wakes up to eat. I don’t want him trying to find me and getting hurt.”

“I know the feeling,” Ana said, laying a hand on his shoulder in commiseration. “At least you don’t have to change his diaper.”

Moments after she left, McCree came in and started unpacking food. He scooped out a little bit of everything for Gabe: pulled pork, beef brisket, mashed potatoes, baked beans, and a corner of cornbread. With a tasting fork in one hand and a tasting spoon in the other, Gabriel went to town on his lunch and the other two followed suit. In under ten minutes there was nothing left, which was to the restaurant’s credit, but meant there would be nothing for Gabe’s second lunch. Jack picked up his husband and kissed him before setting him in bed and tucking him in, the arm of the Strike-Commander figure holding him to its flannel-clad chest. Gabriel snuggled down under the makeshift blanket and sighed happily. Big or small, he was happiest bundled up and warm, and Jack couldn’t help but smile.

“I don’t know what to feed him when he wakes up,” he confessed to the cowboy. “I also didn’t get a lot of work done.”

“I gotcha covered, boss,” was the relieving reply. “I’ll keep him here and feed him when he wakes up – want to get a head start on making dinner, anyway. You go do what you need to get done.”

Jack sighed, feeling a tiny bit of tension leave his shoulders. “You are a blessing, Jesse McCree.”

The cowboy grinned. “Just make sure you remind your husband of that once he’s back to normal.”

“You have my word,” Jack promised with a tired smile.

* * *

 

_Jesse_

 

The filling for the stuffed shells Jesse was planning for dinner was mixed up and in the fridge chilling when a rustling announced that smol Gabe was awake. Quickly, Jesse grabbed the jar of baby pickles and fished out two. One of them, he sliced lengthwise into miniature spears and had them on smol Gabe’s plate before he came out from behind the toilet screen. The other, he sliced into thin coins. His ward was happily munching on pickle before he even had time to announce he was hungry, and that bought Jesse time cut to a hot dog into a dozen slices and lay them in a skillet. While the skillet heated, he sliced a pair of soft breadsticks and piled them on a plate in pairs. The hot dog pieces cooked quickly, and he flipped them to sear the other side before assembling a dozen little hot dog sandwiches, each with a squirt of spicy mustard on one side and ketchup on the other.

The look on smol Gabe’s face was priceless.

While his tiny boss feasted on improvised hot dogs, Jesse carefully cooked both the jumbo pasta shells and the regular little ones and rinsed them in cool water. The post-meal nap let him fill the shells in peace – the little ones required the icing bag, as he suspected they might – and lay them in a sauce-lined pan. Once the shells had been fully prepared, he covered he pan with foil and put it back in the fridge. Smol Gabe was still sleeping, so he carefully packed everything up and brought him back to the commanders’ quarters.

Commander Reyes liked to get in a good workout every day, and Jesse doubted that the smol version would be any different. A dozen big sheets of paper and some clear tape were all he needed to set up an obstacle course of paper tubes, with the first one directly in front of the shoebox door.

As soon as smol Gabe woke up, Jesse knew he’d done good.

The delighted gasp was the first sign, and then the paper tube shook as he crawled down it. When he poked his head out of the other end, Jesse was there grinning at him and he squealed in excitement and threw himself down the next tunnel…but when he reached the end of that, Jesse was there again, and it became a game. Smol Gabe crawled down the tunnels as if racing Jesse to the other side, delighted when the cowboy got there first. At first, the tunnels were just a circle around the table, but it didn’t take much to move them and provide an ever-changing landscape. When the little guy started looking tuckered out, Jesse sent him through one more ring and then had the last tunnel come out in front of a plate of little cookies.

For a few minutes, it was snacktime. Both of them crunched away and washed the sweet cookie down with cool water. Then smol Gabe started pushing the tunnels off the table and frowning when Jesse put them back. Curious as to what the little guy was up to, Jesse stopped and just watched.

Once the table was clear of paper, smol Gabe took cookies from the plate and set them down in a ring around it – an incomplete ring, because he left a space open in the front. Then he laid more cookies on top of those, and repeated it until he ran out of cookies at the third or fourth layer.

Jesse didn’t need the pleading look to tell him what smol Gabe wanted. “Okay, I gotcha,” he said, grabbing one of the tubs of cookies. “Just hang on a sec, I’ll get you more.”

The cookies he piled onto the plate turned into building materials, smol Gabe standing in the middle to place each cookie until the walls got too high for Jesse to confidently reach inside and then running back and forth between the cookie pile outside and the growing walls of the…igloo? Something. Jesse started helping build when the walls got too high for the little fella to reach with his teeny arms, causing more delight as the walls started to converge into a roof over that beaming face. When the last cookie was placed, incoherent glee and faint applause rewarded him from inside.

Naturally, that’s when the Strike-Commander walked in.

“What…” he started, then shook his head and approached at Jesse’s gesture.

“Jack?” announced the little voice from inside. “Jack!” smol Gabe shrieked as his husband crouched down to see into the igloo.

“He’s _so proud_ of himself,” Morrison said quietly. “Did he do this all by himself?”

Jesse shook his head. “Nah. I did the top third, but the idea and the base construction was his.”

“That’s more than enough to be proud of. Come on out so I can kiss you, babe.”

Cheerfully, smol Gabe crawled out to be scooped up and shriek-giggle at the kisses raining down on his head.

“I’m gonna go put dinner in the oven,” Jesse said, and retreated when Morrison gave him an absent nod of approval.

* * *

 

_Jack_

 

Ana joined them for dinner, which made it feel weirdly familial, but the stuffed shells were a hit and the teeny stuffed shells for Gabriel were a _huge_ hit. The dollhouse silverware, not so much. It was perfectly shaped and proportioned, but that made the prongs too close together to actually stab food securely and McCree fetched him a tasting fork instead. While he stabbed tiny pasta shells and stuffed them into his mouth, Ana and McCree caught up on some of the workings of Blackwatch. Jack gave them a brief summary of his day – including his little husband telling him _no_ when work was making him too stressed – and they caught Ana up on how Gabe-sitting was going.

“So the only time you can get anything done is when Gabriel is napping, or Jesse is watching him?” Ana said at the end of story-telling. Although she tried to hide her smile, the corners of her mouth twitched. “It is comforting to know that even in this limited form, your husband watches out for you.”

Jack sighed, but he was smiling. “Yeah. Not gonna let him live that down come Valentine’s day. Not with all the love-notes he’s been drawing me, or the texts he sent while I was in that meeting.”

“Uh,” Gabriel announced. Although he’d been using the tasting fork to spear his tiny stuffed shells instead of eating with his hands, he’d somehow gotten sauce all over his face and hands anyway.

“Right, let me get you a paper towel,” Jack said when he saw the sauce-smeared hands stretched towards him.

He cleaned his husband carefully with a damp paper towel and was tucking him into bed – the poor thing was falling asleep – when Gabe suddenly grabbed his fingers in a deathgrip.

“Uh oo,” he said insistently.

“I love you too,” Jack assured him, but the tiny face of his husband didn’t look reassured.

“Uh oo!” he repeated. _“Uh oo!”_

Jack threw a panicked glance to the other two – his tiny love looked about ready to cry, and he didn’t know what-

Oh.

Apologetically, Jack lifted Gabriel back out of his bed and pressed a gentle kiss to the top of his head. “Love you, babe,” he murmured.

Gabriel tilted his head up to press a tiny kiss to the corner of Jack’s mouth with a contented hum. “Uh oo,” he repeated happily.

This time, when Jack lowered him into bed and tucked him in, there was no complaint.

“Kissin’ is an important pre-nap step,” McCree said sagely.

Jack blushed. “If you could pack his second dinner for me, I think we’ll be okay for the evening,” he told the cowboy. “Just drop by around ten for bedtime.”

McCree saluted. “You got it, boss.”

At first, the evening passed quietly. Jack sat on the couch, quilting, while his husband napped and ate and napped again. He seemed thrilled by the little quilt when he woke up again, but was too restless to be entertained by it for long. McCree had acquired an assortment of doll shoes and socks, and Jack helped his little husband try them on, but none of the shoes fit and he kept pulling the socks back off because they made him slip on the coffee table. After a handful of minutes, Jack gave up and transferred him to the big table, where he played Pac-Man on a propped-up tablet and occasionally nibbled a small cookie left over from the igloo construction. Jack nibbled the spare cookies as well while he started working on a quilted carry-pouch, and when they ran out, absently reached for one of the cookies that made up the igloo.

“Noooooo!”

Gabriel was looking at him with an expression of hurt betrayal.

“Sorry, babe, I wasn’t paying attention.” Gently, he scooped his husband up for a brief cuddle against his chest. “It’s a very nice igloo and I’m very proud of you.”

“Uh oo,” was the chirped reply.

They played peekaboo for a bit, with Gabe hiding in the igloo and poking his head out to Jack’s delighted exclamations of “ _Peek_ -a-boo!”

When Gabriel tired of that game, he moved on to something Jack didn’t follow but involved sitting in the igloo muttering quietly to himself in sounds that weren’t full words. With a mental shrug, Jack left him to it and went back to working on the carry-pouch. He had no idea how much time had passed when the igloo suddenly collapsed and a heart-rending wail emerged from the pile of cookies. Frantically, he brushed them away to unearth his little husband, who was crying with all the intensity he’d ever seen little Fareeha use as a baby. Jack was terrified that Gabe had somehow hurt himself, but a quick check showed that he was only bruised and startled and he held his sobbing husband gently to his chest, practically covering his body with both hands, murmuring reassurance until the small body shuddering against him calmed somewhat.

“We can build it again,” he suggested, but Gabe made unhappy sounds. “Okay, how about this? I’ll bake cookie bars in the morning, and we can use them like bricks and build you a cookie house. We’ll use toothpicks to hold them together so they can’t fall over on you, how does that sound?”

A tiny sound that could have been ‘yeah’ floated up from under his hands.

“Okay. We’ll do that after breakfast, then. What do you want to do until bed?”

“Ogga.”

Jack frowned. “Ogga?”

Gabriel struggled to be put down, and Jack set him on the table. He went over to the tablet and poked a few things until the ancient Atari graphics almost a century old came up: Frogger.

“Right,” Jack murmured, smiling. “Ogga. Well, babe, you have fun trying to get the frog across traffic and safely into its little house. Just watch out for alligators, okay?”

“Ay,” Gabe agreed cheerfully.

Gabriel wasn’t _great_ at Frogger, but he didn’t seem to get discouraged when his frog got squashed or drowned or eaten, either. Jack had the shell of the carry-pouch done by the time McCree knocked on the door and let himself in.

“Aw, no,” he cried in dismay. “Our igloo!”

Gabe’s eyes filled with tears, and his lower lip trembled.

“I’m going to bake cookie bars to make bricks out of,” Jack announced, “and we’re going to build a very sturdy house that can’t fall down.”

Instantly, McCree brightened. “Hey, that sounds like a great plan! But for now, let’s get you cleaned up and in a nice, warm nightshirt and tuck you into bed.”

“Eh!” Gabe announced, arms out to be picked up.

The cowboy carried him off to the bathroom, and Jack transferred the shoebox and toilet setup to the coffee table before picking up the scattered cookies and piling them back onto – or mostly onto – their plate. A handful, he left on a smaller plate by the shoebox. Quickly, he changed into pajamas and made sure Gabe’s nightshirt was set out. When McCree emerged from the bathroom with a towel-wrapped Gabriel, Jack exchanged goodnights and kisses and retreated to make use of the bathroom himself before he slept. Still, he couldn’t resist peeking on the other two.

McCree had set out a handful of strawberry slices and pretzel sticks to go with the cookies, and three shot glasses of water with little coffee-stirrer straws in them. He grinned at Jack as he stretched out on the couch in pajamas of his own, with a pillow and blanket he’d brought with him.

“Night, boss,” he said cheerfully.

“Goodnight,” Jack returned automatically, and retreated again.

Sleep, although better than the previous night, was still a disorienting experience that jerked him from deep, dreamless sleep to waking in sudden panic and checking the security camera feed to confirm that his shrunken husband was still there and either sleeping peacefully or snacking and _then_ sleeping again. Thankfully, he had no problems dropping into sleep again after reassuring himself that Gabe was okay.

When his alarm finally went off, he felt like he’d gotten at least _half_ a night’s sleep, and a hot shower left him feeling awake enough to fake it. He dressed, thanked a groggy McCree, collected his sleepy husband, and strode off to the Officers’ Mess in search of pre-baking breakfast.

Yogurt and cereal may not have been the most lavish meal, but Gabe seemed to enjoy it – even if he did fish his cheerios out of the saucer one at a time, by hand, instead of using a spoon. Once they’d finished, he hung the carry-pouch around his neck and tied the bottom laces around his waist, like an apron, before tucking his excited husband into it and preparing to bake. Gabriel seemed happy enough to watch the proceedings, although Jack did have to take quick breaks to find him snacks to eat – a slice of cheese folded into quarters, or a strip of cooked bacon, things he could eat without leaving the pouch. As the first pans of cookie bar came out of the oven to cool, however, he became fussy and wouldn’t be calmed. Finally, he shrieked “Give!” with both hands stretched out towards the cooling pans, and Jack understood.

Naturally, he wanted cookies.

“Good idea, babe,” he said, searching the cabinets. “Let’s have a cookie break.”

Gabriel didn’t understand what was going on until Jack had one of the giant cookies from the other night on a plate, and had taken his shrunken husband out of the carry-pouch to set him down squarely on top of it.

“All for you,” he said, smiling at the delighted surprise so complete that it blanked out Gabe’s little face for a long minute.

When he recovered, the wordless squeal of excitement didn’t _need_ words, and he tore a chunk off the side to chew on happily while Jack sat and nibbled his own giant cookie, basking in his husband’s glee. He submitted readily to the demand for pre-nap kisses and tucked his little love in, feeling the stab of irrational envy for a brief moment as Gabe snuggled up to Mini-Jack, and then he went back to baking.

* * *

 

_Jesse_

 

After an intense morning handling Blackwatch responsibilities, Jesse didn’t want to think about making sure both his bosses – tol and smol, as he’d been thinking about them – were fed, and he wanted comfort food. So he strolled into the Officers’ Mess with a pepperoni pizza from his favorite pizza place, the one with the floppy New York style crust. Morrison was cutting pans of cookie bars into bricks, and smol Gabe was sitting on a cookie practically the size of a dinner plate.

“Pizza,” he announced as he set the box down and grabbed plates.

Morrison looked up in surprise. “Is it lunchtime already?”

“Depends on if you want pizza or not,” Jesse joked.

He slid two slices onto a plate for the Strike-Commander, two for himself, and one onto a plate that he set in front of smol Gabe – and then grinned as the little fella let out a tiny gasp and opened his eyes so wide that they fairly sparkled. Just as he was about to grab the non-alcoholic beer out of the fridge, however, he got socked with the puppy eyes because this was _clearly_ too big for his tiny hands. Before he could blink, Morrison was there with a pizza cutter, husband to the rescue cutting the slice into little triangles and trapezoids and parallelograms as he ran the blade across it in horizontal strokes from tip to crust and then haphazardly across the strips until they were small enough to not need both hands.

Grinning, Jesse poured smol Gabe a shot glass of ‘safe’ beer and was rewarded with a tiny, heartfelt groan of appreciation. Then he handed the bottle to his tol boss and grabbed a real one for himself.

“Drinking on the job?” Morrison asked dryly as he caught the label on the bottle.

“Worked my butt off this morning,” he countered, sitting down to his pizza. “I’m off duty until tomorrow, ‘cept for smol-sitting for you. And anything else you need me to do, of course.”

Morrison grunted at that, but didn’t protest, and they all spent a few minutes inhaling hot pizza and washing it down with cold beer. Jesse couldn’t resist taking a picture of smol Gabe beaming, a miniature piece of pizza in each hand.

When his plate held only crust and a handful of pieces, smol Gabe stood and walked very purposefully towards the pizza box.

“Whatcha need, _jefe?_ ”

The shrunken commander pointed. “Ehoni.”

It took him a second to process that, but then Jesse reached in and peeled one intact pepperoni slice off the remaining pizza and handed it to him. It was nearly half the size of his face, and he sat down happily to nibble the edge, turning it as he went until he could shove the rest into his mouth and chew in satisfaction. Of course, then he glanced down and saw that his hands were fairly dripping with grease, and turned to his husband with a distressed look while uttering unintelligible sounds. Morrison seems to understand what he wanted, though, because a faint blush tinged his cheeks as he leaned over and stuck his tongue out. Smol Gabe giggled and wiped his hands on the twitching surface, then held them out for the napkin Morrison offered and dried them off.

“Not a word,” the Strike-Commander growled, not looking at Jesse.

“Word about what? I didn’t see anything.”

“Heh. Gabe taught you well.”

After the ritual kiss, the shrunken Blackwatch commander curled up for a nap and the other two finished off the pizza. Morrison did a quick calculation under his breath while staring at the pans of cookie bar, and then sent Jesse down to requisition a couple boxes of toothpicks. Being able to growl ‘Trust me, it’s better if you don’t know’ in answer to ‘why do you need these?’ was amazingly cathartic, and he sauntered back to the Officers’ Mess feeling like he’d bonded with his commander somehow. Morrison loaded him up with a tub of cookie bricks and led the way back to his quarters, where he handed over his supplies and went back to prepare the inevitable second lunch for smol Gabe.

Considering the giant cookie he was sure his miniature boss was going to be munching on, Jesse opted for a low-carb option and cut some roast beef and cheddar cheese into small squares, with a quarter of an apple sliced thinly and half a banana given the same treatment. He returned to find the Strike-Commander measuring with his hands on a serving platter and laying cookie bricks out to form the outline of the future house. Once the outline was settled to his satisfaction, he opened a box of toothpicks and began inserting them into the bricks, one at each end, so that they stuck up like some sort of fence. Then he carefully pressed a second layer of bricks down onto the toothpicks, and suddenly Jesse understood that _this_ was how he was ensuring the house didn’t fall down no matter how hard anyone huffed and puffed.

Smol Gabe was beside himself with excitement when he woke up, dashing around and into the foundation of the house with little squeaks of joy before rushing to take care of his biological needs. He sat, eyes wide, and watched his husband pile bricks inside the outline while he double-fisted fruit and lunchmeat, and in the end was too excited to finish his lunch. He scurried into the house foundation and started placing bricks on top of the low walls. They settled into a rhythm – Jesse transferred bricks from tub to pile, smol Gabe hefted them onto the growing walls, and Morrison skewered them with toothpicks to ensure they didn’t move. They took a break to discuss window placement while the little fella finished his lunch, and then kept working for as tall as he could reach – even though production slowed down as he started yawning.

Once smol Gabe had been kissed and tucked in for a nap, Jesse and Morrison worked to get the rest of the walls built, and then they stared at the roofless building.

“We could whip up some icing and use the little cookies as shingles,” Jesse said doubtfully, “I just ain’t sure what we’d attach them _to._ ”

Morrison frowned at them. “It’s a good idea, it just needs some refinement. You measure out how many rows and columns of cookies we’d need for each side of the roof, and I’ll go mix up a batch of icing.”

“Wait,” Jesse said as the man stood up. “There’s an icing bag in the cabinets. I used it to fill the little shells with cheese.”

“Excellent foresight,” joked Morrison. “I’ll be back soon.”

Jesse lined up cookies against the base of the house, measured them against the rough slope of the roof, and then got distracted cutting spare bricks into triangles to smooth out the slope and provide a slanted surface for the bottom and top. He didn’t even notice that the Strike-Commander had returned until a hand plucked one of his triangles away, squirted a thick, white gel onto it, and pressed it back into place.

“Good plan,” he muttered as he worked. “I did some thinking. If we laid the cookies out on a flat surface and used the icing to glue them in place as a sheet, we should be able to lay the sheet against the frame and just glue it in place.”

“Then don’t glue those bottom triangles,” Jesse yelped, grabbing one out of Morrison’s hand. “We’ll need them to keep the bottom cookies at an angle.”

“Oh.” Morrison blinked. “Right. Good thinking.”

“Whatever happened to the socks and shoes?” Jesse asked as he lined up cookie triangles.

“Shoes didn’t fit and he kept taking the socks off,” answered Morrison, squeezing beads of icing onto the slanted surface.

“Captain Amari’s not gonna like that after she stressed how important warm feet are.”

“I’ll deal with her.”

And that, Jesse thought, took care of that.

With Jesse laying the pieces out and his tol boss manning the icing bag, they got both roof slabs assembled before smol Gabe woke from his nap. The icing wouldn’t be fully dry for a few hours, so Jesse transferred the smol to the coffee table for more adventures with ‘Ogga’ while Morrison created curtains and a door out of facial tissue and tacked them to the house with more icing. Then he shooed the Strike-Commander out for an important conference call and cleaned up the construction mess on the table.

After about an hour, smol Gabe tired of guiding digital frogs through traffic. Jesse was impressed that he didn’t get frustrated, despite never actually making it past the first level, and opened a basic art program on the tablet for him instead. The little guy’s face lit up as his touch spread streaks of color on the screen, and he immediately set to creating a picture that made no sense to Jesse. He was so intent on it that he didn’t notice Jesse answering the door and letting Angela and Winston in.

“We just need some current data,” the gorilla apologized as Angela crept closer to smol Gabe, scanner held out.

“Got any ideas?” Jesse asked quietly.

“Maybe. Could you, uh, provide any data on his metabolic needs? Intake, uh, excretion…”

Jesse frowned. “Exactly what kind of info are you looking for?”

“Frequency,” Winston said quickly. “I don’t need…uh…conversion details.”

“You sure?” Jesse asked with a grin as Angela retreated, data presumably gathered. Smol Gabe shifted uncomfortably and abandoned the tablet to disappear behind the toilet screen. “Looks like he’s about to provide some fresh data.”

Angela peered at her device for a moment and then looked up at him. “With these readings, we may have a solution in a few days.” She glanced at the little guy. “How has he been?”

Shrugging, Jesse said, “Pretty good. He’s easy to entertain and happy unless he’s hungry. Or the Strike-Commander forgets to kiss him before he takes a nap,” he snickered. “Making sure he has food small enough for his mouth has been the biggest challenge, and that’s still pretty easy.”

“Naps?” Winston echoed. “Could you, uh, add that information to your report?”

“Sure.”

“Many thanks,” Angela said, giving him a brief hug.

The doctor and scientist filed out, and when Jesse closed the door, he turned to find smol Gabe glaring at it. It was tempting to explain that they wanted more data, to reassure him that they were gone, but instead he grinned.

“Hungry for more of your giant cookie?” he asked brightly.

The scowl evaporated, and his little hands came up. “Give!”

With bits of cookie as rewards, Jesse set the paper tubes up in a zig-zag on the floor and delighted shrieking giggles floated up as smol Gabe raced down each one to devour the morsel placed at the end. It was several minutes before the laughter faded, and his shrunken boss sat between a pair of tubes nibbling his treat. Jesse had just picked him up when Morrison returned.

“There you go,” he said cheerfully, handing the Strike-Commander his smol husband. “Tuckered him out for you.”

The little guy yawned and curled up in his husband’s hands, asleep before Morrison could even kiss him.

“I was thinking maybe nachos for dinner,” he said to keep himself from commenting on the tender expression on his tol boss’s face. “Either that or shrimp scampi.”

“Nachos,” Morrison sighed. “That conference call left me with things that _have_ to get done. I’ll take Gabe with me to my office.”

“You sure?” Jesse asked carefully. “You…seem like you need a break,” he finished lamely, unwilling to say ‘you look like you’re going to pass out’.

“I worry about Gabe less when I can see him,” he said quietly.

Jesse couldn’t argue with that.

* * *

 

_Jack_

 

At first, Jack was able to make progress on things. Gabe was napping peacefully, and seeing his little face gave Jack the strength to push aside the growing exhaustion caused by the nagging thought that his husband might be stuck like that forever. Also the interrupted and restless sleep he’d gotten.

“Jack?”

He looked over to see Gabe emerging from his shoebox, a worried look on his little face.

“Just doing some work, babe,” he said with a tired smile as he reached for the tablet. “You’ve got work, too – all those little frogs need to get into their houses.”

As he’d hoped, that distracted his shrunken husband and Jack was able to knock out the report from yesterday and a handful of other pressing tasks – skim this and sign off on it, skim that and say yea or nay – before the effort of keeping his head up and his eyes open became too much to bear.

Jack let his head rest on his crossed arms and slept.

Some time later, he woke to something small tapping his face lightly and peeled one eyelid open to see a blur that resolved into Gabriel grinning at him from way too close.

“What’s up, babe?” he asked blearily.

Gabriel tugged one finger until Jack lifted his head, then ran over to point excitedly at the tablet.

All the frogs were in their houses, and the screen had a CONTINUE button in the center for moving on to level two.

“That’s amazing,” Jack said, smiling at his little husband. “Stay right there, I want to get a picture.”

Jack took a picture of Gabriel proudly standing by the tablet, and then McCree entered with a covered serving platter, complete with a folding stand to set it on.

“Nachos and beer,” he announced, removing the cover with a flourish once the whole thing was secure. “One for you…”

He set a plate in front of Jack, heaped with little round corn chips and a generous amount of cheesy salsa/beef mixture with green onions and black olives and sour cream on top.

“…one for me…”

A second plate, this one with red splotches of hot sauce and chopped jalapenos but otherwise identical, was set on the corner of Jack’s desk.

“And one for you, _jefe,_ ” he told Gabriel, setting down a plate covered in the same round corn chips, but each one was topped with a glob of the cheesy mixture, a thin ring of jalapeno, and a drop of hot sauce inside that.

“That’s too hot for him.”

The words were out of his mouth before he realized he was going to say them, and he flushed as both McCree and Gabe looked at him. Slowly, defiantly, Gabe picked up one of his…what, mini tostadas?...and took an enormous bite of it, making sure to get some of the pepper and the hot sauce. Without breaking eye contact, he chewed, swallowed, and stuffed the other half of it into his mouth.

McCree started laughing.

“He’s got this sensitive little system,” the cowboy chuckled, “shouldn’t have booze or caffeine, but he can still handle the heat better than you.”

Gabriel gave his husband a look of pity and patted his hand. “Uh oo,” he said comfortingly.

Jack sighed in defeat. “Love you too,” he told his tiny husband.

The nachos were actually very good and, as with lunch, he and Gabe were sharing a non-alcoholic beer while McCree drank a real one. Probably just as well, because he was pretty sure if he had actual beer – even just one – he’d get completely trashed between how tenuous his consciousness was and how much tolerance he’d lost from years of not being able to drink on duty as Strike-Commander.

Actually, that was a thought. Gabe kept a bottle of some really good scotch in their room for ‘special occasions’. Maybe having a nightcap would help him get something resembling a good night’s sleep…or at the very least, and hour or two of _uninterrupted_ sleep.

By the time they finished dinner, Jack was feeling marginally rested from his nap and Gabriel was a drowsy, roly-poly ball of adorable struggling to keep his eyes open.

“Time for a nap,” he murmured as he scooped his husband up to kiss his forehead and get a tiny kiss in return. “Love you, babe.”

“Uh oo,” Gabriel sighed happily, eyes slipping shut as he fell asleep in Jack’s hands.

Carefully, gently, he tucked his little husband into the shoebox bed and pulled the quilt up to his chin.

“Got more work to do?” McCree asked quietly as he loaded the dishes back onto the tray.

“Yeah. If you could bring his crayons and paper when you bring his second dinner…?”

“You got it, boss,” the cowboy assured him.

“Thanks.”

Jack’s world narrowed to screens and paperwork, and he barely registered sound and motion off to one side. When he was finished with the task he’d been wrestling with, he glanced over to find Gabe scribbling intensely with his crayons. It made him smile, seeing his husband hard at work even though his little head couldn’t hold complex thoughts. Heartened, he opened his correspondence. Maybe he could get some of that backlog cleared away.

He got through half a dozen emails before his eyes started crossing, making it impossible to focus on what he was reading. He closed them, rubbed them, and it felt _so good_ to just sit there for a minute, eyes closed, breathing slowly…

Something brushed against his hand and he jerked awake, breath caught in his throat. He’d fallen asleep with his head on one arm and drooled all over it, while his shrunken husband was using his other hand as a blanket and his thumb as a pillow. There was a little square of paper propped against his screen with a rough drawing of what he guessed was him, judging by the shock of yellow hair and scribbled blue circles that were meant to be eyes. Hearts of every color surrounded his head.

Gabe had drawn him a love note.

Gently, he picked his husband up and kissed him and tucked him into his little bed before turning back to his screen, but he had to cover his mouth and stifle laughter. There, right in the middle of his unfinished email, Gabe had typed “Jack u r the BEST” and he saved a screenshot before backspacing the message away.

“I guess I’m done for the night,” he said softly, shutting everything down.

It was late enough that when he got back to their quarters, McCree was setting up camp on the couch and he already had Gabe’s midnight snacks portioned out.

“Was beginning to think you’d spend the night in your office,” he said cheerfully as Jack walked in.

“Almost did,” he replied, yawning. “Fell asleep in the middle of an email. Gabe drew me a love note and left a second one typed in my drafts.”

Jesse took the shoebox and toilet setup and arranged them on the coffee table. “Well, I’ve got this covered. You get some more of that shut-eye you need so desperately.”

“I plan on it. Good night, McCree,” Jack said as he retreated into the bedroom.

The bottle of scotch was just where Gabe had left it, and Jack took three burning mouthfuls before putting it back. Lightheaded from exhaustion, he wove his way to bed and lay down before the alcohol could kick in.


	3. Chapter 3

_Jesse_

 

Jesse woke early, eyes opening to the sight of smol Gabe chewing a pretzel stick mournfully.

“Mornin’, _jefe,_ ” he said quietly. “You still hungry?”

The little guy nodded, forehead wrinkled with his pleading look.

“How about we go get you some breakfast and make some for your husband at the same time?”

Little hands clapped in glee.

“Alright, you go take a leak if you gotta and we’ll sneak you out in my hat. I’ll leave a note.”

While smol Gabe used the ashtray toilet, Jesse scribbled ‘back with breakfast, J + G’ on a little piece of paper and left it in the shoebox bed. A quick change of clothes followed, and then with smol Gabe giggling softly and clinging to his hair, Jesse settled his hat carefully onto his head and strolled out as though he hadn’t a care in the world.

Once in the kitchen, he set his hat on the table and smol Gabe on the counter. Breakfast was the first order of business, and a handful of Cheerios in a saucer of milk gave him something to work on while Jesse sliced half a banana into the thinnest little circles for him to munch on.

“Happened to see that your husband’s got a meeting with Winston and Angela this morning,” he said as he cracked eggs into a skillet and added bacon. “Hopefully it’s good news, and you’ll be sinking your teeth into a celebratory steak dinner tonight.”

Smol Gabe made a noncommittal noise, which Jesse interpreted as not really understanding what he’d said.

While Jesse cooked, frying eggs big and little along with the bacon, smol Gabe chewed his way through the cereal and banana and made begging noises. He got a strip of chewy bacon and a shot glass of orange juice, and Jesse mixed up pancake batter. By the time breakfast and second smol breakfast had been assembled, the smol had curled up for a nap. Jesse carefully, carefully tucked him into his breast pocket, donned his hat, and returned to discover that the Strike-Commander was taking a shower and the note was still where he’d left it. Quickly, he laid out his and Morrison’s breakfasts and tucked smol Gabe back into bed. When Morrison emerged, damply clean and dressed and looking somewhat refreshed, Jesse was eating breakfast as though nothing had happened.

“When did you…?” Morrison pointed at the plate, then the cookie house which proudly bore the cookie-shingle roof Jesse’d glued on last night, and shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Thank you.”

He sat and dug in, and for a few minutes there was just eating.

“I’ve got a meeting with Winston and Dr. Ziegler,” he said over coffee after most of his meal was inside him. “I guess you saw.”

“Sure did. I’m thinking steak for dinner. Celebration if they have an answer, consolation if they don’t.”

Morrison grunted. “Good idea. I hear you have a way with potatoes…?”

“Potatoes it is. Anything else, boss?”

He shook his head. “I’ll make biscuits, and I know Gabe likes broccoli. If the news isn’t good, I’ll be making dessert, too.”

“Alright. Good luck.”

Morrison smiled thinly, eyes on the shoebox. “Thanks.”

 They spent a lazy morning cooperatively playing a match-three game, smol Gabe getting excited every time a match was made and the brightly-colored pieces cascaded down to fill the empty spots. When he got hungry, he feasted on fried quail eggs and tiny pancakes and then curled up with his substitute husband for his nap. Jesse used the bathroom sink to gently wash his dirty clothes and draped them carefully in the shower to dry while thinking up a physical yet entertaining activity to keep his smol boss occupied until the Strike-Commander got back.

A little poking around turned up the vintage remote-control truck he’d given Reyes for Christmas a couple years back, and he loaded it with a handful of bite-sized cookies. When smol Gabe woke up, they spent a very enjoyable hour playing a game of tag where the little guy chased the truck and got a cookie when he ‘caught’ it. Smol Gabe was starting to tire when Jack walked in, face impassive and unreadable – which meant the news was bad, because that’s what the Strike-Commander’s face _always_ did with bad news. For a minute, he just stood there, watching his smol husband chase the truck, his expression so grave that Jesse was afraid to say anything.

“Hey, babe,” he said quietly as his shrunken husband caught the truck and removed the last cookie.

Smol Gabe turned with a happy gasp and held both arms out to be picked up. “Jack!” he chirped happily. “Jack!”

The Strike-Commander obliged, cuddling him almost desperately.

“Jack?” he asked, voice thick with concern. When his husband held him far enough away to see his face, he offered the little cookie with a worried expression.

Hesitantly, Morrison ate the cookie out of his hands and then kissed his forehead. “Thanks, babe,” he murmured. “I feel better already. I just got some news I didn’t like, that’s all, and it means I’m going to have to work extra hard for a few days. Having fun playing with McCree?”

Smol Gabe nodded. “Uck!” he announced.

“Truck,” Jesse clarified. “We were playing chase the truck, get cookies.”

“That sounds like a wonderful game,” Morrison declared. “Are you going to keep-” He broke off as his little husband yawned, and smiled softly. “I guess that answers that. Naptime?”

“Uh oo,” smol Gabe announced, arms out for his hug.

Morrison submitted to the tiny hug and kiss before laying a kiss of his own on his husband’s babydoll head and tucking him into bed. He watched smol Gabe for a minute, then turned to Jesse. “I’ve got to address some things. It’s going to take Winston and Dr. Ziegler a week to prepare and test the device they’re going to use to try to return Gabriel to normal. They said to thank you for your report, by the way.”

“Hey, anything I can do to help.” Jesse hesitated, then asked, “Do they think it’s gonna work?”

That super-scary look came back, the one somehow more frightening than Reyes at his most terrifying. “For their sakes, it had better, or Winston’s going to wish he’d never left the moon.” Then he sighed and shook his head. “I’m going to be stress-baking tonight. Can you get me a bag of apples? Something sweet, so I don’t have to use much sugar? I’m going to make little pies. And, well, a big one too. Oh, and make sure we have vanilla ice cream.”

Jesse threw him a casual salute. “You got it, boss. Gonna be okay watching him until I get back?”

Morrison looked at the shoebox. “You know what? I’m going to take him to the kitchen and just wait for you there while I argue with my schedule on my pad.”

“That’ll make it easy for me to bring you lunch,” Jesse said, more than half joking. “Alright, I’m off to requisition some apples and ice cream. I’ll meet you there.”

The freezer in the Officers’ Mess had a carton of vanilla bean ice cream tucked into the back, Jesse confirmed before heading over to the other side of the base. It was easy enough to grab a bag of apples from the main kitchen’s supplies, and he was back before Morrison had finished setting everything up.

While the Strike-Commander argued with _someone_ over text, Jesse began peeling apples. He was about half a dozen in before Morrison looked up and noticed.

“When you’ve got a dozen peeled, could you make lunch for Gabe?” he asked quietly.

“No problem,” Jesse assured him. _They_ could withstand a little hunger, but the commander’s tiny body wouldn’t tolerate it. He finished peeling the rest of the dozen, looked at the time, and winced. No time for anything fancy; it was going to be sandwiches.

A tortilla on a large plate, the package of thin-sliced roast beef, mayo, and mustard. Jesse arranged them on the table along with a spreading knife and a sharper knife. First, he cut the tortilla in half. One half got thinly spread with mayonnaise, and the other got spread with mustard. Slices of roast beef got arranged on both halves, and then he put them together for the flattest sandwich in history. He started cutting it into strips, intending to then cut those into squares, but motion made him look up and there was smol Gabe, sitting on the table with one end of the longest strip in his mouth, just going to town on it.

Jesse put the knife down and took a picture.

By the time he’d finished the strip, he looked ready to fall asleep sitting up, and Jesse grabbed the little quilt and folded it into a pillow for him. His little belly was visibly distended – not like it wasn’t after most of his meals, but somehow it was _funnier_ when it had been a strip of food that he’d just devoured methodically, with barely a pause to swallow. The little fella let out a tiny belch and lay down, his stomach almost as round as his head. Jesse took another picture and finished cutting the roast beef sandwich strips into little squares, which he arranged on a smaller plate before constructing sandwiches for himself and the Strike-Commander.

Lunch was awkwardly quiet. Morrison paid almost no attention to anything outside his pad and Jesse ate quickly with only a brief pause to make sure there were ample shot glasses of water, juice, and milk for smol Gabe to drink when he woke from his food coma.

After lunch, Jesse peeled the rest of the apples and then halved and cored them. At Morrison’s direction, he minced two apples and sliced the rest thinly. It was monotonous, but somehow soothing. Smol Gabe woke near the end to drink and use the toilet before falling upon the little sandwiches with ‘num, num’ sounds of appreciation. When Jesse was done with the apples, he minced a handful of strawberries and mixed them into the minced apple.

Just as he had finished washing up, Morrison put down the pad and stretched. “Well,” he announced, “there’s a lot of people that are going to be unhappy with having their meetings and calls pushed back, but I told them that Commander Reyes needed me for something important.” His smile was thin and held very little amusement. “There’s some work I still need to do in my office, but my evening is free otherwise and I’ve pared my schedule for the next week down to the absolute minimum. How has Gabe been sleeping with you there?”

Jesse scratched at the back of his head. “I don’t want to say _like a baby,_ because actual babies sleep more restlessly than the saying implies, but like a baby. An actual baby. He sleeps like the dead and then wakes up needing something to go in one end or come out the other, and once that’s taken care of it’s back to being dead asleep. He doesn’t even notice me when he’s awake.”

Morrison nodded. “Good. I think you can sleep in your own quarters again; the security camera wakes me when he moves, and you’ve just verified that his sleep pattern matches what I’ve observed. I’ll send you my schedule so you can arrange yours as well, but in general I won’t need you more than a couple of hours in the morning and a bit in the afternoon.”

“And meals,” Jesse added in a tone that challenged the Strike-Commander to argue.

The older man winced. “And meals. Thank you. And thank you for preparing the apples for me.”

Jesse grinned. “You’re baking pie; the least I can do to thank you is help get things ready.”

While he and smol Gabe played a fruit-themed match-three game, Morrison mixed up the dough for pie crust and rolled it out. Little circles of dough got pressed into a mini muffin tin and filled with the apple-strawberry mixture – once he’d mixed in spices, of course. Then he set that pan aside while he made the big pie. Smol Gabe got restless at that point and his husband fed him spiced slices of apple while Jesse cut up the rest of the apple from the other day and dug out a handful of pretzel sticks. Once the smol had been satisfied with snacks, he decided he wanted to paint on the tablet and his husband mixed up a crumb topping for the pies.

Jesse excused himself to grab a shower while the pies baked.

Clean and refreshed, he returned with food requisitioned from the main kitchen and trimmed a couple thin slices off of the steaks before tossing them in a marinade. The little steaks, he treated to a dry rub that had gotten enthusiastic approval from Reyes in the past. Potatoes were washed, peeled, sliced, and tossed with a mixture of spices and olive oil before being spread on a baking tray. He took a turn watching over smol Gabe after that while Morrison took the pies out and prepared some kind of cheesy biscuit he said was ‘Red Lobster’ style.

They all enjoyed a little snack of miniature pie while the biscuits baked – Morrison insisted, said they’d suffer less from being served cool than the potatoes would – and smol Gabe was beside himself to have a tiny pie _just for him_ and an entire heaping spoonful of ice cream on top. He attacked it with two tasting spoons while Jesse and his tol boss had a couple of the tiny pies with little spoonfuls of ice cream on top. They were still warm, and Jesse expressed his ineloquent approval in muffled sounds as he chewed. Morrison looked…marginally less stressed to see his husband enjoying himself so enthusiastically.

While the potatoes baked and the steaks came out to warm up, Morrison took the biscuits out and brushed them with an herbed butter before piling them in a bowl and covering them with a towel to help keep them warm. He chopped the broccoli and put it in the microwave to steam while Jesse dug out the cast-iron grill pan and got it heating on the stove. He grilled his and Morrison’s steaks first, transferring them to plates to rest once they were done. Morrison pronounced the broccoli cooked and scooped out some of the smallest florets for his tiny husband. Jesse grilled the dry-rubbed strips for a handful of seconds on each side and put them on smol Gabe’s plate before turning off the burner and checking the potatoes. They seemed to be done, so he cut a few slices into strips and added them to the plate as well. Then he and Morrison loaded up their own plates and set the table. Jesse poured smol Gabe a shot glass of non-alcoholic beer and gave the rest to his tol boss, who was crumbling a biscuit for his shrunken husband.

It was a surreally celebratory dinner. Morrison had an aura reminiscent of a prisoner enjoying his last meal, while smol Gabe kept making ‘that’s good’ gestures in Jesse’s direction and acting for all the world like his normal self – minus being able to speak in full words, although he was certain he caught ‘good’ at least once as the little guy feasted. There was more pie for dessert, although smol Gabe put his hands on his belly and made a sound of complaint when a tiny pie was set in front of him. Morrison apologized, kissed him, and tucked him in for a nap with the promise that the pie would be there when he had room for it. He and Jesse enjoyed slices of apple pie with ice cream, and when he announced that Jesse could have the rest of the evening to himself, Jesse insisted on packing leftovers away (minus a small portion for smol Gabe to eat later) and doing the dishes.

The Strike-Commander thanked him, gathered smol Gabe’s things, and left.

* * *

 

_Jack_

 

As much as Jack tried to focus on just enjoying time with his shrunken husband, the knowledge that this week might be all they had together gnawed at him. Ziegler and Winston had assured him that they would take every precaution, that they would calibrate the device carefully, but they couldn’t give him a guarantee that it would work the way they hoped. There was a chance that restoring his mass too quickly would cause his body to – for lack of a better word – _rip_ as muscles and organs expanded faster than their neighbors. There was also a chance that even though the restoration went correctly, his mind would never recover and the man Jack loved would be effectively erased, leaving Gabriel in this childlike state, or a blank slate, or a mindless husk.

It was heavy stuff, and although he tried to put it out of his mind, Gabriel knew something was wrong and kept trying to cheer him up every way he knew how. Jack got offered pieces of cookie, bites of miniature pie, and digitally-painted love notes, all of which he accepted with genuine pleasure. Even distilled down to his purest essence, he cared about Jack, and that was as humbling as it was sweet – but it made the possibility of losing his husband cut that much deeper.

As the evening progressed, Gabe lost interest in anything but Jack, climbing his shirt to kiss his cheek and refusing to come down. In the end, Jack lay on the couch and sewed a quilted liner for the carry-pouch with Gabe spread out on his chest, fast asleep and doing his best to hug his husband. When he caught himself dozing off, he put Gabe to bed but didn’t retreat to the bedroom. He just lay on the couch for a while, listening to the tiny sounds of his husband breathing and wondering what he would do if the restoration went…badly.

Somewhere between midnight and three in the morning, he stumbled into the bedroom and swallowed three mouthfuls of Gabriel’s scotch before falling into bed and hugging the pillow that smelled like his husband.

Jack woke up to the sounds of laughter: McCree’s hearty guffaws and little Gabe’s joyful shrieks. As much as he wanted to go out and see Gabe smile, he’d overslept and needed to look at least _somewhat_ presentable for the video call he hadn’t been able to reschedule away. So he showered and shaved, brushed his teeth, and rubbed moisturizer and concealer into his skin to give the illusion that he _wasn’t_ an emotional wreck.

Gabriel chirped his name as he emerged, and he couldn’t resist that tiny hug and kiss even as he told McCree that he didn’t have time to eat and thanked him for breakfast anyway. Before his resolve wavered, he assured his little husband that he’d be back soon and put him down on the table – where he promptly looked up at Jack with a pleading expression.

“I’ll be back soon,” he promised quickly, before the tears could come. “And we’ll have hamburgers and ice cream for lunch, how’s that sound?”

Thankfully, Gabe’s expression brightened. “Uh oo!” he chirped out, giggling when Jack leaned down to kiss his forehead.

Jack made his escape, worry temporarily blunted by his husband’s excitement over ice cream. Although he started his video call fighting annoyance, the need to _fix_ things that made him so good as Strike-Commander sucked him into the issue at hand and everything else faded from his awareness. The call ended on a satisfyingly productive note, and only then did he remember his promise. He detoured to the Officers’ Mess and filled a plastic shot glass with ice cream and a drizzle of chocolate syrup before grabbing a tasting spoon and returning to their quarters.

Gabriel was thrilled to see him, abandoning some game with paper tubes he’d been playing, and Jack had to kiss him three times before he stopped chirping ‘Jack!’ and noticed the ice cream.

While his shrunken husband devoured his chilly treat, Jack devoured the remains of the breakfast McCree had made for him – apparently, Gabe had eaten part of it, which made him smile because it just wasn’t a proper meal unless his husband stole a bite or three.

“I’ll let you two eat lunch alone today,” McCree drawled, amusement thick in his voice. “Grab something in town for myself. Pick up groceries for the next week.”

Jack swallowed a bite of cold pancake. “Grab me a bottle of hard liquor? Doesn’t matter what kind,” he added as McCree opened his mouth. “I’m just using it to help me sleep.”

Somberly, the cowboy nodded. “You got it, boss,” he said. “We both know that ain’t healthy, and the commander won’t like it when he gets back to himself, but he’ll understand and I got no high horse to lecture you from. I’ll leave it on your bed if you’re not in when I get back.”

“Thanks.” Jack gave him a tired smile. “When this is all over, I’m giving you three weeks of vacation time and a free pass on your next big mess.”

McCree chuckled. “I appreciate that. You two have a good lunch,” he said, tipping his hat before sauntering out.

Gabriel eating ice cream reminded him of a board game he used to play as a child, and as he finished his breakfast Jack went poking through the tablet until – yes! – he found Candy Land. The digital version was even easier than the physical game: touch the card button and watch as your piece moves to the color (or candy) the digital card shows. Just _looking_ at the colorful board got Gabe’s attention, and moments later they were watching their pieces – red for Gabe, blue for Jack – move down the trail. Gabe won, due to an unlucky draw sending Jack back to the candy cane forest, and he generously peppered Jack’s cheek with kisses as a consolation prize.

It was very effective.

With Gabe in the cozy, quilted carry-pouch, Jack gathered his things and went to the Officers’ Mess to make lunch. McCree had stuck some ground hamburger in the fridge on his way out, which Jack made a note to thank him for, and once his little husband was occupied with coloring he mixed in seasonings and shaped eight tiny, tiny patties and two regular ones. Normally, he was irritated with his husband’s refusal to eat the heels of any loaf of bread, but today the joke was on him because they were going to be the buns for his little burgers. While the burgers were frying, Jack quartered them and cut slices of cheddar to fit onto the miniature buns, ketchup carefully spread on each one, then realized that he could have saved time by preparing the heels and _then_ cutting it into quarters. Oh well.

Gabe’s burgers were done first, of course, so he put four sliders on a little plate and poured his husband a shot of ‘safe’ beer. He contemplated some sort of side dish, but wound up just slicing a pair of strawberries and halving some cherries. Gabriel smiled up at him as he sat down with his own burgers and a glass of Coke, and he smiled back, but he couldn’t help wonder if he would ever see his husband’s _real_ face smiling at him again.

As promised, there was more ice cream after they’d eaten, and although Gabe had his own, Jack kept offering him little bits of his on the tip of his spoon. His little husband smiled with delight _every time_ , and offered Jack tiny tastes on his tasting spoon in return.

“You two are adorable,” Ana said from the doorway, arms crossed and grinning.

Jack smiled. “Ana. Come in and join us.”

She snorted. “I came to see if either of you have been _outside_ in the last few days.”

That made him wince. “Not as such, no.”

“That’s what I thought. And let me guess, you don’t want anyone seeing him.”

“Well…”

Ana rolled her eyes. “ _Jack_. You _had_ a private courtyard put in _specifically_ so you could go outside, lean against a tree, and breathe fresh air without leaving the base or worrying about random agents seeing you.”

He blinked. Somehow, he’d completely forgotten that the courtyard was an option.

“Come on, I’ll help you pack up. Oh, where-”

The tiny sound of the ashtray toilet ‘flushing’ interrupted her, followed by the subtle snap of the container holding squares of sanitary wipe. Gabriel came out from behind the screen moments later, yawning. Jack kissed him, they said ‘uh oo’ and ‘love you too’, and he tucked his little husband into bed with Mini-Jack.

“If you could chop some fruit and grab a bottle of water,” Jack said quietly, “I’ll pack up his other hamburgers and deal with the toilet. No reason he can’t have his second lunch outside.”

Ana smiled and, when he stood to fetch the burgers, intercepted him for a hug.

The courtyard was quiet and cool under the tree. Jack settled himself and Gabe’s things and leaned against the trunk, letting his mind go blank. Within minutes he was out cold, napping with his little husband. He woke up half an hour later to Gabe attempting to climb him, face alight with excitement. Everything was new and thrilling: grass, leaves, breeze, dirt. Gabriel played until his little stomach growled, and then Jack spread a cloth napkin on the grass and his shrunken husband had a delightful picnic. He refused to go back into the shoebox after, despite being half asleep, even after kisses. It took Jack a minute to realize that Gabe wanted to nap on his chest, in the carry-pouch.

Husband securely tucked into the pouch, Jack settled back against the tree and they both took another nap.

McCree found them out there, just as Jack’s half-hour warning alarm went off.

“Jack?” Gabe asked, eyes large.

“I’m sorry, babe,” he murmured, kissing his husband’s forehead and hugging him gently to his chest. “Work calls. I promise I’ll be back before dinner.”

“Makin’ shrimp scampi with pasta,” McCree announced with forced cheer. “It’s gonna be delicious, _jefe_ , you just wait. But in the meantime, hey, do you see that bug?”

While Gabe was distracted by a caterpillar, Jack snuck out and was halfway back to their quarters to change when he remembered he still had the carry-pouch looped over his neck and tied around his waist. He hurried back, untying as he went, but stopped at the Officers’ Mess and left it there instead.

The meeting, unfortunately, was filled with too many politicians and officials for Jack to have been able to reschedule it. He gritted his teeth and smiled with warmth he didn’t feel and mouthed pretty phrases and was too aggravated by the whole ordeal to worry about Gabriel.

Escaping at the end and changing back into casual clothes was a relief in and of itself, but sliding into the Officers’ Mess to a heavenly cloud of garlicky shrimp smell and Gabe’s thrilled cry of “Jack!” chased the rest of the tension away.

“Good timing,” McCree said from the stove. “Dinner’s just about ready.”

Jack sat at the table, where his shrunken husband ran up to be hugged and babbled partial words that he couldn’t interpret. Whatever Gabe was trying to tell him, he was _thrilled_ by it and Jack didn’t have the heart to tell him he didn’t understand. Luckily, kisses and encouraging sounds were all Gabriel needed and he was distracted away from his story when McCree set a plate down in front of Jack.

A mound of angel-hair pasta topped with buttery garlic sauce and scattered with little shrimp glistened on the plate, with broccoli florets scattered around the edges. A second plate sat across the table, and a smaller plate sat between them for Gabe. McCree set glasses – or shot glasses – of juice by each plate and handed out forks.

“Dig in,” he said encouragingly, following his own suggestion.

Jack set his suddenly-squirming husband down and twirled pasta onto his fork as he watched Gabe make a beeline for his plate and grab a shrimp with his bare hand – only for it to squirt out of his grasp and fly halfway across the table.

With a squeak of outrage, Gabe darted after it and picked it up – but again the buttery morsel leaped out of his grasp, and he turned to Jack with pleading eyes.

“Here you go, babe,” Jack said, picking up the shrimp and holding it out carefully.

Gabriel put his hands on Jack’s fingers, holding them still while he ate the shrimp out of them. Then he laid a tiny kiss on each fingertip in thanks.

“Try picking them up with both hands,” Jack suggested, miming one hand on either side of an imaginary object.

Nodding, Gabe returned to his plate and Jack stuck his pasta-laden fork in his mouth, humming appreciation and giving McCree a thumbs up. Carefully, cradling the shrimp in his tiny hands rather than grabbing them, Gabriel ate them all out of his dinner and then held his buttery hands out for Jack to lick clean. Blushing, he obliged his husband while McCree pretended he was neither watching nor grinning. Once Gabe’s hands had been dried on a tissue, he took up his tasting fork and began the undignified process of twirling the short strands of pasta onto it and eating them off the tines. When he got too frustrated, Jack offered him one of his shrimp, but that was only a temporary measure. After the second or third time, he gently took the little fork and loaded it carefully with pasta. Gabe’s face lit up and he sat on the table, happily letting his husband feed him until the pasta was gone and his shot glass of juice was empty.

“I’ll, uh, cut his second dinner up real fine,” McCree said as Jack tucked his little husband in for a nap. “Also, that stuff he was jabberin’ at you earlier was probably the pretend camping we did outside with a lil’ fire and everything. He might want to do it again, so I got you a regular ash tray and some twigs and wooden matches and the cloth scraps will burn pretty good. Also got some mini marshmallows and clipped a bamboo skewer down to size if you want to let him toast them to go with the little cookies.”

“Chocolate-chip cookie s’mores,” Jack said with a faint smile. “It’s a good idea. Maybe some simple camp songs. Thank you. You’re really good at this.”

The cowboy flushed. “The commander was a Boy Scout,” he protested. “He told stories about camping. I just listened.”

Jack’s mouth dropped open. “Wait – _he_ was? He never told me! And he teases _me_ by calling me Boy Scout? That sneaky little-” He shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll get the dishes while you get his second dinner.”

With a dish of shrimp scampi chopped fine enough that Gabriel could eat it with a spoon – even the little shrimp had been cut into pieces – and a bag of miniature campfire supplies, he and McCree transported everything back to his quarters and the cowboy bid him goodnight. Jack entertained himself by building – but not lighting – a tiny fire in the ashtray with rolled scraps of cloth for logs and twigs forming a cone. A pile of marshmallows on one side and a stack of cookies on the other with the skewer in the middle completed the setup, and Jack moved the cookie house to the coffee table in case his little husband wanted to play in it. Then he sprawled on the couch with cloth and sewing supplies to put together a little sleeping bag until Gabe woke up.

A quietly disgruntled “Jack!” alerted him that his husband was awake, and with a bit of surprise he realized it had been nearly an hour.

“Sorry, babe,” he said, putting the unfinished project aside. “You hungry?”

Enthusiastic nodding was his answer.

“Want more shrimp scampi, or do you want something sweet?”

Gabriel made a curious sound, and Jack pointed to the miniature campfire setup. Gabe shook his head and uttered, “Ah eh.”

“Not yet?”

Nodding.

“Alright, more shrimp scampi it is.”

While Gabe ate and napped again, Jack finished the fleece-lined sleeping bag and congratulated himself on having the idea of using the fly from the pants that had been used for the shell to the sleeping bag, the carry-pouch, and the mattress. He laid the sleeping bag by the mini campfire just as his little husband stretched and emerged from his shoebox bed.

“Ready to toast some marshmallows, babe?” Jack asked.

He was rewarded with an excited look, and Gabe darted over to sit on the sleeping bag and shove a marshmallow onto the clipped bamboo skewer. Jack struck a match and lit one of the cloth rolls, and within seconds the little fire was burning cheerfully to Gabriel’s tiny ‘ooooooooooo’.

Naturally, he set the marshmallow on fire, but he was able to blow it out and take a cautious nibble. Apparently it wasn’t done enough, because he held it back above the flames a little while longer before munching it straight off the stick. Excited by this flammable treat, he jammed another marshmallow onto the skewer and set it to toast. He kept toasting and eating, ignoring the cookies entirely, for as long as the little fire burned. Jack sang a couple of camp songs, but Gabriel didn’t seem inclined to so much as hum along, much less attempt to sing.

When the fire burned out, Gabe pouted for a few seconds before shoving the last marshmallow into his mouth. Then he went for the crayons and drew scribbled pictures of fire and trees and bugs.

Jack took him into the bathroom to wash him in the sink when he started looking tired, dressed him in a nightshirt, and tucked him into bed with the usual kisses. Once his little husband was asleep, he ducked back into the bedroom to investigate the bottle McCree had left him.

Tequila.

Well, it would knock him out, that was for certain. He could feel the worry gnawing at his gut now that Gabe was asleep, and he choked down a few mouthfuls before stripping and climbing into bed.

Sleep, for the first half of the night, was dark and dreamless.

The second half was full of anxiety and waking up to check on his shrunken husband, and eventually he gave up and took a long, hot shower trying to both relax and refresh himself. Clean, shaven, dressed, and mildly hungry, he emerged with the intent of watching his husband sleep and maybe getting some emails done.

When he peeked into the shoebox, however, Gabe wasn’t there.

For a single, heart-stopping moment, he panicked. Then he realized one of Gabe’s crayon drawings was in the makeshift bed half-covering Mini-Jack, and a soft giggle floated out from the cookie house. Crisis averted, he sat on the couch and picked up the drawing. His name had been laboriously written in blue crayon, and below it was a very impressive heart composed of pink, red, and purple hearts inside one another, getting smaller and smaller until the center was just a tiny v of purple. His shrunken husband, distilled down to his purest form and barely able to manage words, had left him a love note.

“Aw, Gabe,” he murmured.

Another giggle came from inside the cookie house, but when he looked, the tissue curtain was still in place – the door, however, fluttered a little.

“If only Gabriel were here,” Jack intoned with mock-sorrow, trying not to grin, “I’d give him _so many kisses_ for this gorgeous love letter!”

One of the tissue curtains lifted enough for big, brown eyes to peek out. Gabriel giggled and vanished again.

“Wherever could he be? He’s not in his bed!” …and the sleeping bag was gone, he realized. “Is he in…”

Gabriel burst out of the cookie house, arms spread. “Peek!”

“Peek-a-boo! _There_ he is!”

Jack scooped his tiny husband up for kisses and giggles, ‘falling’ back dramatically onto the couch, with Gabe standing on his chest trying to hug his chin and peppering his face with tiny kisses – which is how McCree found them when he came in with breakfast.

* * *

 

_Jesse_

 

Jesse was only partially surprised that smol Gabe didn’t want breakfast yet. Apparently, Jack had not only left a stack of little cookies for him, but also the bag of mini marshmallows had been where he could reach them and _that_ explained _everything_. Smol Gabe was more wired than he’d ever seen Reyes, demanding the cookie house be moved back to the table (“Oww! _Oww!”_ ) so he could play peek-a-boo with Jesse while his husband stuffed pancakes and eggs into his face. Once the Strike-Commander had finished eating, he took a turn entertaining his smol husband while Jesse scarfed down his own breakfast.

Adorably, smol Gabe got so excited about peek-a-boo that he charged out of the cookie house to throw himself at Morrison’s face, laughing and kissing. Morrison, going a step further, ducked his head to kiss his smol husband’s belly, which caused him to throw himself down onto his back and kick his little legs, giggling. The Strike-Commander lifted the hem of his shirt to blow a real raspberry into that plump little belly, and smol Gabe shriek-giggled and flailed at him. Jesse grinned as those tiny hands got a grip on Morrison’s nose, but then the Strike-Commander raised his head _and smol Gabe was dangling from his nose_ and Jesse nearly snorted orange juice out his nose trying not to laugh. Morrison winced, head jerking back, both hands coming up to catch the smol as his grip slipped. Then they were apologizing to each other, Morrison murmuring ‘I’m sorry, babe, I’m sorry’ and smol Gabe chirping ‘Jack!’ in an anxious voice. Many kisses were exchanged, Morrison kissing his smol husband’s forehead and the smol laying tiny kisses on the tip of Morrison’s nose.

It was so cute it almost hurt to watch, and Jesse _absolutely_ took pictures and maybe a short video.

Once they’d calmed down, smol Gabe expressed interest in his breakfast (Jesse had chopped the sausages into little slices so he could stab them with his little fork) and Morrison was able to escape for his video call with a distracted ‘Uh oo’ and one last kiss. The little fella stuffed himself until he was more round than Jesse had seen him and then held his arms up in a demand to be tucked in. Naturally, Jesse obliged.

It was going to be a long day, he realized half an hour later when Morrison shot him a text saying that the video call had snowballed into three other things he had to address _right now_ and he was going to be working through lunch and half of the afternoon. That wasn’t going to over well with the smol boss, he thought. He was able to delay things with second breakfast and the accompanying nap, but the little guy was going to know something was up come lunchtime.

When smol Gabe awoke and changed into clean clothes, ready to start the day, Jesse had an idea.

“Hey, _jefe,_ ” he started, keeping his voice light, “I was thinking maybe we could do something special for your husband for lunch. Y’know, since he’s gotta work so hard.”

Smol Gabe looked up at him, frowning. After a moment of solemn consideration, he nodded. “Ay-ee,” he declared. “Eesh.”

Jesse blinked. “Uh…run that by me again, boss?”

“Eesh.” Smol Gabe scowled and pointed at Jesse’s hip. “Own.”

Warily, the cowboy held out his phone and waited while the smol poked at it. When he peeked at the screen, he’d sent a text to Morrison that just read KEESH.

“Keesh?” he asked rhetorically. Then realization made his puzzled expression evaporate. “Oh, _quiche!_ Hey, that’s a good idea.” The phone in his hand chimed, and he looked down to see that Morrison had responded with praising his husband – at least, he _hoped_ the Strike-Commander wasn’t calling _him_ ‘babe’ – and requesting the spinach quiche from a specific place in town.

He had just pulled the place up on the map when smol Gabe tapped his fingers, and he turned the phone obediently. The little guy poked at the map and then repeated ‘Ay-ee’ in a satisfied tone. When Jesse checked, he’d highlighted a pastry shop close to the quiche place.

“Oh, _pastries_. Y’know, _jefe,_ that’s a good idea, too. I don’t know what the Strike-Commander would like, though…”

“Me,” smol Gabe declared stoutly.

Jesse closed his eyes and took three deep breaths, telling himself firmly that his smol boss hadn’t meant it _that_ way, he was simply asserting that he could point out what pastries his husband likes. “Alright,” he said, opening his eyes. “So we’ve got our lunch adventure and a side trip for pastries, but the question is…how am I gonna carry you around safely without just…carrying you?”

Smol Gabe pointed to a tangle of cloth hanging from one chair, and Jesse discovered that it was a sort of front-pack, a pouch that went over his head and tied around his waist with a quilted lining for the smol’s warmth and comfort.

Okay then.

He slipped it over his head and tied it securely before picking up his smol boss and settling him into the pouch.

“Right. Let’s go get quiche and pastries.”

Sneaking the tiny commander out of the base turned out to be as easy as tossing on a light jacket, buttoning it, and pretending to read a pad as he walked so that the bulge on his chest was hidden. Of course, their first stop was the Officers’ Mess for fork, spoon, shot glass, and stirrer-straw, which Jesse dumped into a baggie and shoved into the pocket of his jacket. He unbuttoned the jacket once they got outside, and smol Gabe stood up excitedly to look around as Jesse checked out a hoverscooter, his chin just barely clearing the top of the pouch. They began their journey with a relaxing ride across the base grounds, the scooter’s nav system charting a path to their destinations along pedestrian routes and avoiding vehicular traffic as much as possible. For the most part, no one paid any particular attention to them and the few that gave smol Gabe a second look gave up as the little guy ducked out of sight and Jesse cruised past.

Reasoning that the quiche would cool and the restaurant was closer to the base, they went to the pastry shop first. Jesse explained his passenger as being a prototype remotely-controlled android, and took smol Gabe out of the pouch to more easily let him point to the pastries. He had no idea what half of them were called, but they soon had a box full of delicious-looking things for the Strike-Commander. With how smol Gabe had been eyeing some of them, though, Jesse took the initiative and bought him a small fruit tart of some kind as well as something flaky that involved chocolate and a big, soft pretzel.

With the boxes in the scooter’s basket and smol Gabe in the pouch munching on a piece of pretzel, Jesse made his way to the restaurant Morrison had indicated. He got the quiche for Morrison, but also one for his smol boss – Quiche Lorraine – and a sandwich for himself. A couple bottles of fancy juice, and with lunch obtained they were off back to the base. When Jesse checked the scooter back in and retrieved his purchases, he discovered that the motion had lulled smol Gabe to sleep. This time, there was no need for the subterfuge with the pad: the box of pastries in his hands with containers of quiche and fruit tart balanced on top blocked his chest nicely, and the bag with juice and sandwich and his flaky chocolate thing dangling from one wrist obscured the side view. They reached Morrison’s office without incident and slipped inside, but the man didn’t even look up from whatever was causing his forehead to wrinkle in frustrated stress.

“Brought lunch,” Jesse said after a moment.

Morrison only grunted in a distracted way.

“And your husband, and his lunch.”

Another distracted sound.

“Oh yeah, and I took him into town-”

“You did _what?”_ Morrison demanded, on his feet and looming furiously in a heartbeat.

“He, uh, wanted some kind of pastry but couldn't tell me what...” Jesse lifted the pastry box slightly, feeling smol Gabe stir in the pouch. “...turns out...he wanted pastries for _you._ ”

The fury melted away, leaving the Strike-Commander looking old and tired, but also filled with love for his little husband. Jesse lowered the box, revealing the carry-pouch with a sleepy smol poking his head up and blinking.

“Jack,” he breathed happily.

Morrison gently lifted his smol husband out and cuddled him. “You got me pastries, babe?”

“Eh!”

“That’s so sweet of you, thank you. Just what I needed to get me through this afternoon. Are you going to eat lunch with me?”

“Eh!”

Jesse set the box down out of the way and began unpacking lunch, using the Strike-Commander’s fork to break the crust on smol Gabe’s quiche and pouring him a shot glass of juice. Then he took his juice and sandwich and sat back, watching Morrison and smol Gabe eat their lunch together, carefully feeding each other bites. The Strike-Commander distracted his husband before he could get too full, and then he held the smol in one arm and fed him bits of pastry while taking bites of them himself until smol Gabe gave a little belch and held his arms out for a pre-nap hug and kiss.

“Thank you for this,” Morrison said quietly as he tucked the sleeping smol into the pouch.

Jesse gave him an encouraging smile. “He knows how stressed you are and wants to help.”

“This _did_ help. We- well, you don’t need to hear the details of our relationship, I’m sure, but pastries from that shop have been present at every milestone and this was an _incredibly_ romantic gesture.”

Jesse wasn’t sure what to say to that.

“I’ll take good care of him,” he said after a moment, gathering the smaller box with the fruit tart, his chocolate pastry, and the remnants of the pretzel. “See you for dinner?”

“You will, even if I have to kill someone,” vowed Morrison.

Jesse retreated with smol Gabe, the rest of his quiche, and dessert.

When the smol woke from his nap, he demanded the tart (“Ay-ee! _Ay-ee!”_ ) and demolished it for his second lunch instead of the quiche. After his second nap, he seemed…restless. Jesse tried to get him interested in Frogger, or Pac-Man, or painting, but he fussed and got grumpy, scowling and grumbling and eventually hiding in the cookie house, refusing to come out or even talk to Jesse. The cowboy made a valiant attempt to get smol Gabe to tell him what was bothering him, or what he wanted, but eventually he remembered Morrison saying he could only focus on one thing at a time and realized that _being unhappy_ was what he was focusing on. It wasn’t that he wanted something or that there was something causing his unhappiness, he’d just somehow gotten into a loop of being unhappy.

Warily, he texted Captain Amari.

_What do I do when the smol is so focused on being unhappy that he doesn’t remember why he’s unhappy anymore?_

A minute later, she texted back.

_If nothing is causing the unhappiness, you need a distraction. Something new and different enough to get his attention._

New and different. Jesse cast his mind back, way back, all the way to his earliest memories. What did he like doing when he was a bitty thing?

Playing in mud.

Well, the courtyard didn’t have much in the way of sandy bits or exposed dirt, but he remembered the dessert called ‘dirt and worms’. Damned if he knew how to make it; chocolate pudding and crushed Oreos and gummi worms were in it, that’s all he knew. But they _did_ have some Oreos, and he knew he’d seen a package of chocolate pudding in the cupboard…

Jesse packed up the shoebox, the toilet, the carry-pouch, and a fluffy hand towel from the bathroom. With the rest of the quiche packed up as well, he carefully picked up the cookie house platter and made his way to the Officers’ Mess where Amari, as it turned out, was having tea and a snack.

“What are you doing?” she asked as he carried everything in, taking the platter and setting it on the table so he could unpack everything.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. “It’s a surprise.”

“Oh dear,” she murmured, grinning. “A surprise. How mysterious.”

Jesse went to the cabinet and pulled out the Oreos, then turned to Amari and pantomimed bashing them; she nodded and found the rolling pin. He handed the cookies over at her gesture and went looking for the pudding. While she crushed cookies, he whisked together pudding mix and milk, and in mere minutes they had a large, shallow bowl with pudding on the bottom and a layer of cookie-crumb ‘dirt’ on the top. As Jesse placed the bowl on the table, he saw one of the tissue curtains flutter as if a smol hand had been holding it up but dropped it.

“I better go clean up,” he announced. “I sure hope no one gets into my afternoon snack while my back is turned.”

Amari smothered a laugh and silently sidestepped around the table until she couldn’t be seen from inside the cookie house, and Jesse retreated to the sink to clatter dishes around. Only after he heard the first surprised shriek-giggle did he rinse his hands and come back to the table. As he’d hoped, smol Gabe had stripped naked and was playing in the bowl of edible mud and dirt. He watched as the little guy sucked a fist clean, making noises of appreciation, but then he went back to playing. Amari gave him a nod when he met her eyes; she’d watch him while Jesse really did clean up. It was inevitable that smol Gabe would get cold, playing in pudding like that, and Jesse not only cleaned everything in the sink but also filled it with warm, soapy water as deep as his fingers.

Sure enough, within twenty minutes, the smol was shivering and his lips were blue.

“C’mon, _jefe,_ ” Jesse said cheerfully. “Time to get you warmed up and cleaned off.”

He lifted the smol out of the bowl but held him away from his body. The little guy was covered head to toe in goopy, lumpy chocolate, and he hunkered down in the sink as soon as Jesse set him in it. Gently, gently, he washed his smol boss clean with warm water, fingers working through his hair to get all the pudding and crumbs out while smol Gabe played with the suds. Once his little baby-doll body was clean, Jesse let the sink drain and gave him one last warm rinse before whisking him up to wrap him in the fluffy handtowel. The microwave went off, and he assumed it was Amari, but when he turned, she’d vanished and it was Morrison taking the leftover Quiche Lorraine out, a tasting fork in one hand.

“I’ll take him,” the Strike-Commander said as he set the plate on the table.

Smol Gabe’s cry of “Jack!” was just a bit shivery and his arms were secured by terrycloth, but Morrison smiled and cuddled him.

“I missed you, babe,” he said softly. “Did you have fun?”

“Eh,” smol Gabe said. “Uh oo.”

“I love you, too. Hungry?”

The little mouth opened and, chuckling, Morrison fed him a tiny bite of warm quiche.

“You look like you have this under control, boss,” Jesse said quietly. “I’m just gonna leave you to it. Popcorn chicken and fries for dinner tonight, and we’ve got some broccoli left over for him.”

Morrison didn’t look up from doting on his smol husband. “Sounds good, thank you.”

Jesse slipped out of the kitchen to find Angela –  or Winston, or both – and question them about the chances of successfully returning Commander Reyes to normal.

* * *

 

_Gabriel_

 

 “…the rest of the week pretty much went the same way,” Jesse said with a shrug. “Your husband bein’ all clingy and stressed and you bein’ worried about him in your own little way, me steppin’ in to smol-sit when he had meetings or calls or was just too worried about you to be able to reassure you when you were trying to cheer him up. He tried to eat healthy, because if he was eating something, you wanted a taste, but he wasn’t real good at it. Winston and Angela popped in a couple of times to take readings and calibrate the device they’d created to reverse the effects, because they wanted to do it slowly – somethin’ about not givin’ you stretch marks of doom.” The cowboy drained his beer and put the bottle on the coffee table. “So about an hour ago, we brought you back to Winston’s lab and he scanned you with his gizmo again and nothin’ happened, but he acted like that’s what was _supposed_ to happen so the Strike-Commander brought you back here and probably took your clothes off and I guess it _did_ work, because here you are.”

Gabriel frowned. “But I don’t remember any of it. One minute Winston’s about to scan me and the next, I’m standing over there in all my naked glory and Jack looks like he’s about to fall over and sleep for a week.”

“Well, see, that’s why I have video.” Jesse handed a memory chip over. “All the pics and video clips I took, plus a link to the security camera feed.” He pulled his own phone out and called up a file. “See? Here I am, putting you to bed with a pile of little cookies and a cup of water with a little straw so when you woke up hungry, you could feed yourself and I could sleep through the night. Or, well, you know I’m a light sleeper – I’d wake up but be able to drop back off because you didn’t need anything from me.”

“What about Jack?”

Jesse snorted. “Oh, he got up every half hour to check on you. I mean, he didn’t get out of bed, he had the security feed on his phone so all he had to do was look at the screen, but it meant he still slept like crap ‘less he was drinking.”

The frown on Gabriel’s face softened as his gaze drifted towards the bedroom. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “He would. Listen, Jesse, I’m sorry for taking my frustration out on you-”

The cowboy waved it away with a derisive noise. “Y’been angrier than that with me, _jefe_ , and patient when I was being a little turd.”

“-and thank you for stepping up to take care of things when I needed you,” he finished firmly. “I’ll make it up to you. Right now, I need to process this and I need to dote on my husband for a bit.”

“You got it,” Jesse said easily, standing up. “Call if you need anything. I’ve taken the liberty of ordering a huge breakfast for you two, which I’ll leave on that table at nine sharp.”

Gabriel shook his head, grinning. “I taught you well, _mijo_.”

Once the cowboy had sauntered out, he retreated to the bedroom and cautiously climbed into their bed. Jack shifted immediately, throwing an arm over his husband’s body and grumbling before Gabriel had even settled down. It was a minute before he had arranged himself to be sprawled comfortably, propped up by pillows with his husband’s head on his chest and his arm around Jack’s shoulders. With his other hand, he queued up the first videos and hit play.

It was hours later – through the evening and after a night full of vivid, surreal dreams – that Jack stirred and let out a dry sob.

“I’m here, sunshine,” Gabriel murmured soothingly. “It’s okay. _I’m_ okay. I love you.”

“Love you too,” Jack murmured back, relaxing. “You were adorable, and you tried your best, but I _did_ miss hearing you say those words.”

Gabriel stroked his husband’s hair. “Then I’ll be sure to say them extra-often to make up for it. You know, when we said _for better or worse, in sickness and in health,_ I don’t think anyone anticipated that _while you’re the size of a toy_ would be part of that. But you were amazing, sunshine, and I know it wasn’t my fault but I’m sorry I worried you and I’m going to take the next couple of days to show you _exactly_ how grateful I am for the excellent care you took of me.”

While Jack smiled slowly into his chest, he bent to kiss his husband’s head.

“Starting with breakfast in bed,” he continued, faint sounds from the other room indicating that Jesse was delivering breakfast. “You fussed over me, and now _I’m_ going to fuss over _you_.”

Jack rolled over to smile up at him, somehow managing to light up the room despite the dark circles still under his eyes. “I think I can deal with that,” he said softly.

“Good.” Gabriel leaned in for a soft kiss. “Because I love you, and I’m not giving you a choice.” The laughter that bubbled up out of Jack’s lips made him feel like delight was a golden syrup simmering in his veins, and he smiled. “Now stay right there, and I’ll be back with breakfast, okay?”

His exhausted-looking husband reached out to cup his cheek, urging him gently in for another kiss that Gabriel was only too happy to give. “Before you start pampering me,” he said, “there’s something I need to tell you.”

“Oh yeah?” Gabriel hugged his sunshine closer. “What’s that?”

Jack grinned and pressed his lips to the corner of Gabriel’s mouth. “Uh oo,” he murmured, smirking when his husband groaned.

The only possible thing to do was to kiss the smirk off of those lips, and that’s exactly what Gabriel did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much love to Giza and tatch for their art! This event nearly didn't happen, and it took about half a year longer than expected, but they stuck with it and we made it and finally, I can share all this cuteness with everyone. <3 Check out tatch's art [here](http://tatchloup.tumblr.com/post/182137670830/my-first-pic-for-the-blackwatchbigbang-backup-and) and [here](http://tatchloup.tumblr.com/post/182137714140/and-the-second-pic-for-the), and Giza's art [here](https://gartblog.tumblr.com/post/182170353601/this-is-my-artwork-for-blackwatch-bigbang-give)!


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